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’ve just written two editorials for Techi.com. One of them has yet to be published, but my piece on HP’s acquisition of Palm and Apple’s purchase of Siri is now up on the site. Neat!

Nepal is one of the poorest and least connected nations in the world, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many Nepalese geeks looking to stake a claim on the web and better themselves and their families. Boing Boing went to Nepal’s biggest tech fair and documented the goings-on in a fascinating photo essay.

It would appear that Apple is in fact looking to expand the iPhone OS past the iPod and iPad. To what purpose? Well, Steve Jobs did refer to the iPad as a “magical platform”, and maybe there’s more to that statement than just the iPad’s seemingly limited abilities. Maybe Apple is working on ways to convert their entire line of laptops to some hybrid of the iPhone OS, giving even professionals a new way to express themselves.

Or maybe not. After all, the iPhone OS is (at least at present) somewhat limited, and an application like Final Cut Pro would need a radical revamp in order to work in an “iPhone OS-ish” setting. But I’ve always said Steve Jobs is a lot smarter than I am, so we’ll have to see what Apple has in mind with this latest mysterious move.

After years of waiting, rumours and nonsense, the Apple iPad is finally upon us. Am I impressed? Am I blown away? Kinda.

Clearly it makes sense to move media from the somewhat clunky interface of keyboard and screen to a touchpad, and Apple is the company to move the computer industry kicking and screaming into a new paradigm. And what the iPad does, it does very, very well, from we surfing to reading books and newspapers. And yet….there’s something missing. Maybe it’s the fact that there’s no camera, no multi-tasking and the fact that the iPad seems geared more to content consumption than content creation.

As someone who creates content for a living, that leaves me high and dry. I can’t use the iPad for quick and dirty vlogging or podcasting and I definitely won’t be editing video on it anytime soon. I have a Macbook Pro and an iPhone, and between the two of them I get everything I need without a third device.

But on the other hand it’s a new platform, so as a content creator that makes me happy. In theory, the iPad form factor makes it an ideal platform for video and for print, both fields I happen to work in. It even opens up the possibility of new forms of magazine, hybrids of video, audio, game content and print articles, distributable by small publishers consisting of a writer, developer and designer. In a way it could be the rebirth of the zine.

In fact, the potential of the iPad is almost limitless. But right now, that’s just what it is…potential. And that’s why i won’t be getting one just yet.

I could do without all the ads, but the rest of it looks mighty neat. Plus if ads move to an AR format, you just turn ’em off until you need access, rendering the real world blissfully ad-free.

All indications point to “maybe.” But The Beast from Cupertino recently purchased a huge data center, and the possibility of Apple moving into the streaming video space would be a perfect fit for not only their rumored tablet device but also for the TV in your living room. Everyone hates the cable companies, and if Apple could do an end run around them, they could repeat their successful reshaping of the music industry Throw in saving print through the tablet and the ability for anyone to broadcast from anywhere and you’ve got a media revolution. Maybe.

Shai Agassi has an audacious plan for implementing electric vehicles on a massive scale, and he may just pull it off. Below I’ve posted a video from Agassi about how important it is for the world to use technology and entrepreneurship to kickstart a revamp of our industries in order to keep us from a climate crisis.

I know some people deny the existence of the climate crisis, but to my mind this is a change that should happen regardless. We will run out of oil in this century, and we’ve been coasting on 19th century technology for a long time. Even if the climate maintains stability or heats up without our help, at the very least we’ve updated and innovated our infrastructure, created many new jobs and will likely make many new discoveries along the way. There’s no good reason not to do this, other than keeping established players wealthy. And those established players stand to gain as well, as long as they get in front of the problem and push their resources towards a solution.

Because movies tell stories, and 3D is at best a sideshow, according to Cory Doctorow in his latest Guardian column. I’m inclined to agree. 3D is touted as cinema’s saviour, bringing audiences back to the theatre and away from video games and home theatres….but without a story to back it up, which is usually best told in regular 2D, you aren’t going to see people sticking around. James Cameron’s Avatar and other upcoming films may prove me wrong, but I doubt it.

The Associated Press created quite a stir recently by declaring that people who link to their stories are violating copyright. In effect, the organization declared war on the internet, and is taking what I think is a colossally wrong headed turn towards walling off their content from the very people it should be showing it to, ie) the world. Notable new media thinkers like Jeff Jarvis have railed against AP’s move, but now he’s been joined by an unlikely ally. Chris Aheam, the President of Reuters Thompson, has written a column called “Why I believe in the Link Economy,” where he explains how Reuters will embrace opportunities created by the internet, rather than fighting the future and losing.