Delta boosts wi-fi availability of some of their domestic flights. What they don't tell you is that in-flight internet is provided by a company called Gogo. To use Gogo's network, you can purchase a Gogo Pass for $9.99. This pass gives you internet access during the duration of the flight it was purchased on. Sure a cost is expected in a world where everyone, especially airlines, are trying to find ways to cut cost and/or increase revenue but limiting the connection to the flight your on might not sit well with someone who has a connection like I do today - Boston to Atlanta and then onto Myrtle Beach. The other little detail about their service may users may not be aware is their network shaping. The term this preservation of equitable passenger experience. What this means is they prioritize network traffic to control the amount of data that is flowing from their mobile internet router to individual laptops and other internet ready mobile devices. These items are listed content such as file sharing, gaming requiring high bandwidth, or streaming audio and video. These items are "given a lower priority and at times may not work consistently or at all." So if you think your going to watch 6 episodes of Lost in HD streaming from abc.com on your way from New York to LA you might be surprised to find that it may not be possible at all. So be careful when buying your Gogo internet services on your next flight.
As for me, I wrote this post in the air using notepad and simply posted it when we were back on the ground. Now I am off to watch a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory that I preloaded on my laptop.
Knowing their fan base, the guys over at Lost begun their third alternative reality game called the Dharma Initiative Recruiting Project. At a minimum, it gives us Lost fans something that is connected to the show while we wait another 5 months for season and along the way we get some show clues, which is what we really want. In this year's ARG, the Dharma [Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications Initiative]Initiative is recruiting new members to join their exploration into fields such as meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetism, and Utopian socialology. As a tie into the game and as a bridge from season 4 to season 5, the following video was leaked during/after Comic-Con:
The video shows a transmission from 30 years ago by Dr. Pierre Chang [who is also known as Dr. Marvin Candle, Dr. Mark Wickmund and Dr. Edgar Halliwax from other orientation videos] who has knownledge of current events as well as those to come - like The Purge, which from his perspective will happen in about 14 years from the time he broadcast this video. He also urges that the DHARMA Initiative be reconstituted to finish the important work he and his colleagues had been engaged in which brings us back to the ARG. I can't wait to see where the games takes us and how it all ties back into Season 5.
If you are an avid reader and are not sure what to do with all those books once you have read them, try Mooching. Book Mooch is a web site for exchanging used books that you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.
The clever part of the site is the point system. In order to mooch books from others, you need to earn points which you use up as you get free books from other people. You earn points when you add your book inventory, give away books and respond to mooch requests. You use up points when you mooch books or when you give your points away to charities. Here is the point system breakdown:
Add a book to inventory + 1/10th Give away book (within your country) + 1 Give away book (to another country) + 3 Mooch a book (within your country) - 1 Mooch a book (from another country) - 2 Acknowledge receiving a book you mooched + 1/10th
Over the past year, their membership has grown by 90k and at the same time a total of almost 1 million books have been mooched. Interestingly enough, the number of members who have shipped a book is almost 10k more than the number of members who have received a book so I guess this community is made up of givers.
I can't wait for my first book to arrive and for the first book I shipped [today] to get to it's destination.
The Cock Punch list orginally just had a list of names of people who need a good old fashioned punch in the baby maker. Well the guys over at 23/6 have taken the idea a step further in launching Dickipedia - A Wiki For Dicks! Yup a full on wiki (a monolingual, Web-based, free content encyclopedia) dedicated to those people who are dicks. The site currently contains several catagoires of dicks from Political dicks like Eliot Spitzer to Media dicks like Ann Coulter to Entertainment dicks like M. Night Shyamalan or The Beckhams to Sports dicks like Kobe Bryant (or The Beckhams again) to International dicks like Hugo Chávez to Miscellaneous dicks like Donald Trump or Your Mom. The site is off to a good start and I look forward to all the future dicks that get their very own Dickipedia page.
Marvel Kids has launched a slick Create Your Own Superhero area on their website. Go on over and see if you can create someone cooler than my own Eagle Eye.
Music "sharing" has been a widely documented phenomenon starting Northeastern's very own Shawn Fanning through today's BitTorrent file sharing world - especially at the collegiate level. The latest thing for our oh-so clever college kids is book sharing. A site called Textbook Torrents says if you have saved enough money by using this site (say, $200 worth of textbooks), please go out and buy a scanner. Scan as many of your other textbooks as you can, and put them up here for others to benefit from. There aren't very many scanned texts out there, so let's change that. Perhaps not the most legal idea, they maybe on to a new method from companies to distribute materials to a wide audience without needed large bandwidth.
Although they had made some strides, TT received a stop and desist notice from Pearson Education [78 torrents disabled], which may put a dent in there plan of textbook domination. I'll give them some school credit for a clever tag line... You Can't Torrent Beer. True, True.
Fringe, the new show from J.J. Abrams [Lost, Cloverfield, Star Trek] was "leaked" onto the net last week. Now knowing that Abrams doesn't do anything by accident, I am guessing this was done on purpose to help build the buzz regarding his new show, which will premiere on Fox on September 9th.
The show follows FBI Agent Agent Olivia Dunham [Anna Torv] who is now part of a super top secret government group investigating the unexplainable. Dunham will work closely with Dr. Walter Bishop [John Noble] to deal with all of the "Fringe Science" as it is called in the pilot. Dr. Bishop can only stay out of jail if his ultra-genius son Peter Bishop [Joshua Jackson] remains as his guardian. Rounding out the group of FBI types are Special Agent Phillip Broyles [Lance Reddick] who is in charge of the super group and Agent Charlie Francis [Kirk Acevedo] who appears to be one of Agent Dunham's superiors [for now].
Like other Abrams' shows, Fringe will have an overall mythology which looks to be centered on Dr. Bishop's work in the early 70's and his former partner William Bell, who is now CEO of a global company called Massive Dynamics - $50 billion-dollar organisation responsible for research, development and production in a variety of different areas include but are not limited to weapons testing, robotics, medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. In the pilot they call the mythology The Pattern. In one scene Broyles explains to Dunham the kinds of incidents include missing children return 10 years later without aging, plane omits sound and an hour later an earthquake erupts in that location, or coma patient wakes up to write down the exact locations of battle cruiser around the globe. This is what the show is calling The Pattern. A worldwide experiment. The question is who is running the Pattern and why. I'm guessing Massive Dynamics will play a major part in all of it.
The pilot was estimated at a cost of $10 million to make and some of the effects are pretty good and I really liked the mind meld sequence, which included a hint of Lost-like whispers. I also like the 3D location names layered on the scenes and the fact that hey sprinkle in a few scientific sounding terms like Pearl Autopilot System and Kelvin Genetics. A big plus for the pilot being based in Boston featuring Logan, Harvard, Southie and a reference to the Boston Marathon.
Given that this show will have lead-in's like House [in the fall] and American Idol [in the spring], I don't think ratings will be a problem. So if you are a fan of The X-Files, Lost, or Twin Peaks you might just like this show. Now if Agent Dunham and Dr. Bishop can just explain with the Smoke Monster is on the island we might get somewhere.
I tried again to upgrade my phone this weekend but unfortunately I was again turned away by your retain outlets. This time the problem is not that my name and number has purchase ability but rather I am the second phone number on our family plan. So the sales representative told me that I could not utilize the $50 credit the account has for a phone upgrade but I could pay $20 transfer fee and purchase a new phone if I wanted to. Hmm let me think about that... Nope, thanks.
Yup, that's an 0-for-2 trip to the Verizon retain store.
So after returning home, I called their 800 service line and I was told that upgrading my phone using our account credit is not a problem and she promptly ordered me a new red juke phone which should arrive mid-week. The service rep actually commented that I have no need to go to their physical location unless I need to look and touch a new phone, otherwise everything can be done online or over the phone. Thanks for the tip, so now I will never need to return to one of those -oh-so-unhelpful locations as long as I remain a Verizon customer. Maybe we will start seeing less and less retail stores if this trend of anti-service continues.
Which at this point, is fine with me.
Verizon Customer 123456789 [because we are all just numbers to Corporate America]
According to Wired Magazine the mixtape is gone for most intents and purposes, but the idea of assembling a few tunes for one's friends is very much a thing of the present. Muxtape is the latest service we've seen that lets users assemble mixtape-like play lists online, and it might be our favorite. To that end, I created my first official BOTB/DJ EL Train Muxtape for your listening enjoyment. This is a collection of known and unknown artist covering a fairly wide variety of styles. Most of these songs I found from commercials, tv shows, and [believe it or not] music played at stores. Enjoy!
PS: Feel free to create your own muxtape and share it with your friends.
What would it look like if you were to blend Catherine Zeta-Jones, Keira Knightly, Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron together? You would get the beautiful Catheinize Zightly-Jeliens! See how it is done here:
The Urban Dictionary defines a mancrush as "the highest level of attraction a man can have towards another man without having any sexual want towards that man." I'm not sure if mancrush.com is really intended for guys to rate other dudes but if it is, it's interesting to see what other men guys "look up to". Since the list is currently 1310 dudes long, I thought it would focus on the top 10 fictional characters and they are:
10. Jason Bourne [# 68] 9. Ferris Bueller [# 66] 8. James Bond [# 61] 7. Dwight Scrute [# 58] 6. Aragon [# 39] 5. Jack Bauer [# 32] 4. Jack Sparrow [# 19] 3. Indiana Jones [# 8] 2. Han Solo [# 7] 1. Jim Halpert [# 5]
Other notables in the mancrush top 100 are Perry Cox # 70, Legolas # 78, Spiderman #87, Batman # 88, Jack Shephard # 90, and Gregory House # 95. [Note these values can and will be different when you get around to visiting the site]
So from the above list it seems that mancrush members like The Office, Harrison Ford movies, LOTR, superheroes and doctors.
finetune is a website created by survivors of the original Napster, Gigabeat, and Listen.com and it has a comprehensive music library with almost 2 million tracks and growing. Using finetune you can create your own playlists finetune is new kind of online music service with a unique combination of features: Enter an artist name, listen to a playlist of related artists personalized for you, Create your own playlist from our library, listen, share with others! Currently they have almost 100 million listener hours in 20,000 user-created playlists.
Big 80's: 0ver 300 tracks from the great decade that defined my generation. Since this playlist features only 1 track from a given artist that means there are 300 artist in the list too. If I added the allowed 3 tracks per artist, this list would grow to well over 700 songs you would remember.
New England Baked Music: 57 songs from artist who hail from the New England region. Some of the artist are well known locals [Boston, The Cars, Aerosmith] others might suprise you that they are the hood [John Cafferty, Liz Phair, Moby].
The Train Kept A' Rockin: 45 tracks that will rock your socks off. It's what I call "Angry White Guy Music".
Enjoy the music and keep listening, or reading, as the case maybe.
Do you like STP, Weezer, Nickelback, Offspring or Rage Against The Machine? Do you have an internet connection? Would you like to have some control over your streaming radio station? Well then XRM Radio is the place for you.
I discovered XRM the other day looking for an internet radio station to listen to at work. There are thousands of ShoutCast stations to listen to but what set this one apart from the others is their play list and community. They have a pretty good list of alternative tracks that they play and it looks like it is continually expanding but the real power of this "station" is the user driven content. As a registered member you can request songs which are typically played within the next few songs depending on traffic. They have cleverly limited each user to 2 requests per hour and 10 per day to eliminate a single user from controlling the music and they also have a suggestion area where you can add the songs you would like them to add to the play list as well as vote on other's suggestions.
This type of setup seems like the natural evolution of the so-called Audit Hits format [also know as Mike, Jack or Max]. Wouldn't it be great to drop a few requests online just before you head out the door to drive home and hear your songs along the way? It could just be the unlimited capacity iPod the world is searching for. In the meantime, fire up Winamp and listen to XRM online.
CBS is pushing out two wedcasts for their new comedy The Class which is your chance to watch the making of an episode, live from the set. Today, you can join the cast for a table read. You’ll return to the set on Wednesday, January 17, to watch the run-through. Yet another excellent idea to extend the serial network show to the internet and to utilize [or re-use] their typical activities to drive market awareness. I am hoping to listen in to the webcast today and report how well it went.
This fall, there are 3 new shows on TV that use the show-within-a-show format - 30 Rock, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Ugly Betty. While the concept of the show-within-a-show is not new [see Murphy Brown, Home Improvement, Seinfeld or radio show-within-a-show like Frasier, NewsRadio, WKRP in Cincinnati] what has changed is the networks view on digital content, the internet and show extension. Additionally, we have not seen this many shows using this format all at the same time before. Trend or Coincidence? Only time will tell.
Each of these shows have aired bits of the in-show however it is Ugly Betty who is taking the next logical step which is to "broadcast" the in-show over the web. Each Thursday, ABC will make available another couple of minutes of their Telenovela "Lives of Fire". This is an excellent extension of their show and a great use of digital content. Wouldn't it be fun to see a whole Studio 60's Studio 60 or 30 Rock's The Girlie Show [recently renamed to TGS with Tracy Morgan] episode online? I think so too. Come on NBC, try to keep up.
Knowing their fan base, the guys over at Lost begun their third alternative reality game called the 
The 
