Stories From Away

I made four videos this past year about my year studying abroad and the transformations and challenges that I experienced. I made them for my school’s study abroad department, in hopes of connecting to other students. I made the videos in the hope that my stories might help others get the most out of their travels, but also cope better with coming back.

Feel free to check out the other videos and let me know what you think.

Customer Service

What does it say about your product if the wait time for customer service is longer than 40 minutes?

Fuck the RIAA…again…and always

If Downloading A Song Is Just Like Stealing A CD, Why Won’t The RIAA Allow Reselling MP3s?

from the either-it-is-or-it-isn’t dept

When you hear RIAA defenders insist that an unauthorized download is “just like stealing a CD” or something along those lines, it’s worth noting even they don’t really mean it. After all, if a digital file really was no different than a physical goods purchase, then you’d be able to do other things with it — such as resell it. And yet, as you read through Eliot Van Buskirk’s article about new online services trying to create marketplaces for people to sell their “used” MP3s, you’ll see the scenario is quite different. After all, it’s perfectly legal to sell your used CDs, but now when it comes to selling used MP3s you need a record label’s permission? Why? Well, because even the record labels seem to inherently know that a CD is quite different from a download. So when the RIAA claims they’re the same, what they really mean is “only the stuff we like is the same.”

Is the sacrifice worth it?

I miss writing about technology, privacy and security.

During WWII people gave up so much (silk and such) for the war effort in order to fight a semi-tangible enemy (at least one that had a specific geo-political border). I guess it’s only fair to give up something intangible for something intangible (Terror, Drugs…).

Yet how do you know when the war is over? When do the rations stop?

So long, good friend

VHS is finally dead.

“The last major Hollywood movie to be released on VHS was “A History of Violence” in 2006. By that point major retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart were already well on their way to evicting all the VHS tapes from their shelves so the valuable real estate could go to the sleeker and smaller DVDs.”

I know, not my usual shocker article, but I’d like to pay homage to the VHS.  After it was made mainstream by porn, VHS has entertained us for something like three decades, really taking off in the 90’s.

So I’d like to write about some memories that I have with VHS. A eulogy, of sorts. Feel free to add your own memories in the comments section.

I remember still being in Russia, so I was under the age of 6, and how I thought my Grandpa was something close to god (secular Soviet home) because he could make TV stop, rewind, and play at will. I watched endless reruns of the same episodes of Gummi Bears (in Russian of course). I thought the TV power solely belonged to my Grandpa. Sure, I didn’t know it was a trusty VHS that held my joy on it, but there it was, a token of  my early childhood.

In case you’re curious as to what Gummi Bears sounds like in Russian..

You can only imagine my sheer happiness when I discovered that this strange new land, America, also had Gummi Bears, albeit in it’s own language. America also had those adorable little cheese wrapped in wax (Babybel), which I first met on the plane coming to the USA, where I promptly ate the cheese, wax and all, until some nice lady took pity on me and explained to me that I can take the wax off.

Oh VHS, I remember the sheer control. I could put it in, record anything I want on TV, play it back, record over it again. I remember recording mistakes. I remember footage being lost. I remember the joy of finding it again, accidentally, that as you’re watching some old cartoon, for nostalgia value as now you’re too told for the cartoon, that you recorded at a very tender age that would get interrupted midway through by the porn that you recorded from the TV at that same tender age.

I remember feeling so powerful. I could capture moments. I could rewind and play at will. I could erase. Maybe this sounds so geeky, but the idea that one could take memories from the TV without permission. We don’t have that anymore. We pay for it. We are also watched. Someone else knows what we record. What we prefer. The privacy is gone. That was really the glory of VHS, video home system, the privacy in your own home. Obviously this was primarily for porn purposes in the beginning, as it’s nicer to watch it at home instead of some peep show theater. With VHS we had our own personal cinema. It was so revolutionary. It was so intimate. I loved hitting pause, and then play and watching everything move very very slowly. I loved the noise of the machine when it would fast forward or rewind. You could feel the little guy working.

I remember the anticipation of tracking. When the tape was too old and it would be fuzzy and not so perfect, and you would hold your breath hoping that tracking would fix it. I remember actually the days before auto-tracking and how that was a bitch and a half to set the levels just right. It was a sense of pride and accomplishment every time I made a video look good.

I loved the working technology as a kid, but I also loved it when my parents gave me the important task of destroying videos as well. I’d pull the black tape out and out and dance with it in the house. Sometimes I would rewind it manually with my fingers. See if I could put it back together. See if I could undo it more. I would braid it into my hair, then take it out because I wasn’t allowed to look like that outside the house. I loved how tangible VHS was.

My college house still has a ton of VHS tapes. Old Disney movies, not digitally remastered, that we gather around and watch. We bask in the feeling of being young again. Of the tape sometimes being soft around the edges. How everything wasn’t so perfect, and that is, and was, part of the appeal. Nothing more exciting than taking that clunky VHS tape and watching the VCR eat it. No menu screen with options. Just ff and then play. No DVD that sits and keeps replaying the menu screen over and over.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the new digital world. Yet sometimes I miss the fuzzy memories of my youth.

So goodbye and so long, VHS. You done good. I know others will make a far more creative and artistic omage to you. You might get some gallery installations. Some modern art pieces. Maybe a movie and documentary. Maybe a porno.

But you will never again teach young immigrant girls how to capture memories on their own. Don’t worry, VHS, your memory is already captured. It keeps playing inside. My generation watches your graceful death. You embody the death of our childhood.

Sick Inventions

Wireless Electricity

Nation’s First Gym to Run on Human-Generated Energy

What recessions are doing for new ideas.

The Twitter of Photos

Radar is basically Twitter, except with photos. So now everyone can actually see where you are.

As the website says, “This is why you have a cameraphone.”

You share photos from your phone and they immediately go online. It was a very logical step. Of course, it’s also more awkwardly stalking because sure you can put photos of you on Facebook, but you also can set who has access to them.

Are any of you guys thinking of joining it?

Oh, and related:

20% of teens post nude photos online.

One out of five 13- to 19-year-olds have posted nude photos or videos of themselves on the Internet.

The survey of 1,280 teenagers by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancies found that while most only send nude images to a “boyfriend or girlfriend,” 15 percent of teens who have sent out sexual material did so to someone they only knew online.

The Empire of the Algorithm

On today’s Internet, algorithms rule. But a handful of startups are using large-scale human participation to offer online services that computers alone can’t deliver. Can human judgment scale with the Web?

The question of the next decade is: How can we find what we want — the perfect job, just the right pair of shoes, exactly the news that’s important to us — amidst the maelstrom of information that’s available on the Web? Google, of course, is the de facto answer, it’s algorithms generating a ballpark guess at what we want when we type in a few search terms. But the burgeoning mass of data on the Internet is threatening to outmode such robotic tools. So a growing number of start-ups is putting forward another strategy for filtering the Web: Use human judgment first, computer power second.

Online killed the TV star?

Online video is not cannibalizing TV. –

Inspired by Nielson

Below is a selected quote. Go read the full thing here

A few weeks ago, IBM released a report showing 36% of people watched significantly less TV as a result of their online video viewing. Their study was based on 2,800 people polled across six countries.

A more recent report from Nielsen, however, reveals the opposite: TV viewership is not declining, but is in fact at peak levels. “The new report from the media analysts at Nielsen found that video viewing across all three screens – TV, Internet, and mobile – increased from last year. As of the third quarter 2008, the average person in the U.S. watched approximately 142 hours of TV in one month. In addition, people who used the Internet were online 27 hours a month, and people who used a mobile phone spent 3 hours a month watching mobile video,” summarizes Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb.

It is important to note that the Nielsen study polls people across the US only.

Perez goes on to emphasize that TV-networks would make a mistake in not making their videos available online. “Viewing has increased on all three screens. That means that even though TV viewing is an all-time high, both mobile viewing and online videos are seeing a surge as well,” write Perez. “If anything, that should be a huge encouragement to the industry as it proves that, not only does online and mobile video not detract from TV viewing, there’s an opportunity to monetize all three screens for record amounts of income too.”

Immersion

Okay, so kids are into videogames. Let’s make it look dark and scary. Gray tinged background. Creepy light on faces. Find the most effed up kids you can find. Scare people and parents. Maybe that’s reading too much into it. Maybe it’s someone who just wanted to make a video of the stupidest looking kids playing games. They searched long and hard for these children. Cost them 3 nickels too!

That zombie girl was listening to some bad Russian rap. I have no idea what game she could possibly be playing. Maybe she’s watching TV? I’m convinced some kids are watching TV.

I’m obviously not impressed by the video. Does it do anything for anyone else?