Freyburg

TechCrunch is a great resource for tech rumours and breaking news on startups and new tech trends. It’s also a continual soap opera run by Michael Arrington, a mercurial provocateur with an eye for scoops and a skill for controversy.

Now Techcrunch has joined TWIT TV, This Week In and others and is moving to live streaming shows over the net with Techcrunch TV. If you have the resources to create professional looking programs from a studio, livestreaming is a great alternative to post-produced programs, because you can archive shows as you go and quickly build a huge library of content. Of course that sort of approach demands a big crew, multiple hosts and a large wallet to pay the bandwidth bills…none of which is accessible to small producers such as myself.

But in a larger sense it’s a very interesting shift towards niche audiences and away from mainstream, lowest common denominator fare. Tech Crunch is aimed at a very specific and very influential audience, and their move towards what amounts to a cable TV station is indicative of how far the medium has come in not only changing the way people watch video to stay informed, but how easy it is to create what amounts to a television station. The barriers to entry keep falling, and what requires a small business (after all Tech Crunch isn’t NBC) today will be doable on your phone tomorrow.

Here’s a sample of TechCrunch TV for your perusal:

I originally wrote this article about the new Doctor Who video game for Eurogamer, but then E3 happened and by the time the annual gaming conference was finished the game had already been out for a while. So as a result, Eurogamer nicely said I could publish the article anywhere I like.

I’m lucky enough to know Phil Ford, the writer of the game and of various Doctor Who episodes (along with being the head writer of the Sarah Jane Adventures) and he was cool with being interviewed for the article, presented in full below. And if you’re arriving from Radio Free Skaro…hello! Thanks for listening ot the podcast and I hope you enjoy my site.

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One of the UK’s oldest heroes is entering a whole new world.

Doctor Who returned to the small screen in 2005, hypnotizing a whole new generation of viewers with the adventures of the Doctor and his companions as he once again hurtled through space and time vanquishing his enemies with only a keen wit and his trusty sonic screwdriver.

Though the new show soon spread to other media such as novels, toys and comics, video games were unexplored territory until the BBC announced earlier this year that they would release four “adventure games” featuring Matt Smith, the newest incarnation of the Doctor, and Karen Gillan, who plays Amy Pond, his new companion.

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It was only a matter of time before iPhone 4 filmmakers began posting well-crafted vignettes like this little gem below. While watching it I was thinking that it could have more easily been done in Final Cut Pro or any number of other editing programs….but the fact of the matter is that a phone, something everyone carries in their pocket, pulled off an amazing little short that previously would have taken weeks, required a crew and wrought grief from the filmmakers. This little number was made in less than 48 hours with an everyday device. I like the future.

iPhone 4 hasn’t even arrived in Canada yet, but for some reason (likely because the OS isn’t all that country-specific) Apple is allowing Canadians to download iBooks, the Apple branded e-reader currently found on the iPad and on U.S. iPhones.

And as of right now, it’s a complete disaster.

At first iBooks couldn’t even reach the iBookstore. Starting the app resulted in futile warnings, but searching revealed you could find public domain works from Project Gutenberg for download. All well and good, because who DOESN’T want to read Wuthering Heights on their phone….except that your iBookshelf iEats all your iBooks. Keep downloading them, and they’ll simply disappear. SOme people have had luck syncing their books through iTunes, but I haven’t.

More to the point, I’m chompng at the bit to actually BUY some books, but Apple won’t let me. I suspect whenever the phone is introduced in Canada (presumably at the end of July) the store will be populated with bestsellers and other goodies, and it may not even be Apple’s fault. Canadian publishers, like most of the old print guard, aren’t exactly know for forward thinking and bold new strategies.

In other news, getting rid of custom wallpapers dramatically speeds up the performance of my jailbroken iPhone 3G. Weirdly, having a nice bit of background on my home screen seems much more challenging than multitasking several programs at once. Who’da thunk it?

iOS4 hit the iTunes Store this week, and with it came several updates designed to enhance the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad gaming experience. Here’s a list of the new and improved features that will affect your gaming:

Gamecenter: Companies like ngMoco and others have up until now created adhoc social networks to connect up players for games as diverse as We Rule and Words with Friends. Apple has in one fell swoop replaced their patchwork efforts with Gamecenter, a social networking hub for iGamers to connect, compare scores and compete.

Unfortunately, Gameceenter isn’t out yet, with only vague promises of “this summer” to tide us over. Until then you’ll have to use Feint or one of the other competing services, or actually (ugh) talk to your friends and set something up.

The other big addition for gamers is the gyroscope, though unfortunately it’s restricted solely to iPhone 4 owners. Like the compass and the accelerometer, the gyroscope will literally bring a new dimension into gameplay. Steve Jobs impromptu display of his Jenga skills at the WWDC keynote notwithstanding, it’ll be very exciting to see what amazing gameplay iPhone developers come up with to take advantage of the gyro.

Not quite related to gaming, but thrilling to the anal-retentive amongst us is Folders, which lets you organize up to twelve apps in a folder that opens up when you tap it. I’m sure all of us have tons of games scattered far and wide across many pages of our iPhones, and the folder app lets you gather all of them up onto one page, and even sub categorize them into different genres.

Last but not least is the Retina Display. With a 960 by 640 display, the new iPhone screen has eye-popping clarity. While many are touting the screen’s suitability for surfing the web or reading e-books (all of which are valid points), think back to the leaps in gameplay that occurred int he glory days of the Graphics Card Wars. Entirely new game genres like first person shooters and RTSes became possible on the PC, and now that same revolution will happen on the iPhone. FPS still presents a challenge due to the iPhone’s touch screen controls, but RTSes and other tactical games could get a real boost from the increased screen real estate and sharpness. And dare we dream of World of Warcraft on the iPhone? Yes we dare indeed.

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iOS4 has arrive, and many 3GS and iPhone 4 nerds will soon be able to enjoy multitasking, HD video and video calls on their shiny new (and newish) Apple phones. For cheap bums like myself, however, iOS4 becomes more of a question. Is the download worth it for a phone that, at least in Apple’s view, is somewhat underpowered? I would say it is worth it to upgrade.

When I first upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS4, it was locked, untouched and following the rules. Apple insist that the phone lacks enough power to handle multitasking and customizable background wallpapers (!), so those options aren’t included. You also have to download iBooks as an app (more on that later.) What you do get is Folders, a truly wonderful feature where you can group similar apps together and cut down the clutter on your pages. I’ve dwindled my pages from 8 scattered app piles to 3 highly organized slabs of goodness.

You also reap the benefits of a more finely tuned mailbox, which allows for threaded conversations and implements a unified mailbox, if you want to use such a thing.

But if you jailbreak the 3G, you get nearly everything.

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When I worked at Superchannel in the mid-90’s, I pined for the day when cheap hardware and software would allow anyone to start up their own television station, free from the restrictions of both the CRTC and TV execs who continually aimed straight down the middle at the lowest common denominator. THere weren’t any shows that seemed to address what I was interested in, and no way to use my talents to cover interesting niche topics because there simply wasn’t a venue for that kind of content. Remember, this is before Youtube, when Realplayer was as good as it got for online video (ie. terrible.)

But there was one exception to this rule, a show produced in Vancouver called the Electric Playground, made for gamers by gamers, and at the time the only media in the mainstream that treated gamers with respect instead of derision. At the time I vowed that one day I would work for the show….and against all odds, one day I actually did just that.

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E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is the biggest industry celebration of video games on the planet, and I’m currently in the thick of it. I’ve never been to E3 before, and the sheer amount of games and gaming related content is a little overwhelming.

I was able to attend both the EA and the Sony press conferences, and seeing them on streaming video (as I’ve done in previous years) is nothing compared to being there on the broadcast riser watching thousands of game fans go nuts as new titles are announced. Though I don’t own a PS3 and I’m not much of a Sony cheerleader, even I got a little excited when Gabe Newell of Valve walked out onto the stage and announced Portal 2 for the PS3. 3D gaming seems to be the big thing this year, with showcase games like Killzone and Crysis 2 both being shown in 3D. I personally think it’s a bit of a gimmick and I’m not willing to part with $2,500 for a new 3D TV, but time will tell. Nintendo probably has the right idea with a small, relatively cheap 3D system that doesn’t require glasses.

The show floor is pretty crazy, with a million nerds million around gawk-eyed at the spectacle while booth babes saunter past and actors drenched in sweat labor under costumes based on whatever new game is being touted.

One thing I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of video cameras at this conference, and not just the usual media suspects. Many, many websites have quite decent rigs (equal to or better than my own fairly expensive beast) which says to me that either a lot of rich kids have a very cool hobby or there’s actual money to be made in the business of covering gaming, even for the little guy. I certainly hope that’s the case, at any rate.

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Star Trek has been covered before by documentaries, most notably Trekkies 1 and 2. But it’s never looked like this, combining the story of Gene Rodenberry’s son exploring his dad’s legacy, the sociological impact of the show, and some really amazing cinematography.  I’ll definitely be on the lookout for this film, which as of yet doesn’t have a distributor. Read more in the Wired article about Trek Nation.

Snoop Dogg and Daft Punk interacting with Kenobi and Greedo. Brain just exploded.