Seeking Nerdvana

Electronic content delivery has taken another step forward in Australia, with ReelTime Media offering download-to-own movies available the same day as they hit the retail shelves.

Considering the download times, Reeltime ain't anywhere near real time.

Read the full post at http://www.hydrapinion.com/index.php/play/2006/12/01/reeltime_offers_download_to_own_movie_se

* NOTE: This post is on Hydrapinion, an opinion-based, multi-headed blog - or hydrablog - I've started with four other freelance technology journalists. My topic is Play and my day is Friday so from now on I'm going to point to Hydrapinion every Friday, but Friday is also the day I'll post TechVidReviews here at Seeking Nerdvana and reprints of my magazine products reviews that don't appear online elsewhere.

For many years I've been seeking my dream handheld device for using in the lounge room. Nothing I've seen yet quite fits my futurist vision of the perfect device - namely a sub-500gm, A5 slim-line slate. The kind of thing a Star Trek ensign would hand to the captain, listing the week's duty roster.

Raon Digital's Vega ultra mobile PC wasn't all I had hoped for - but I still hold hope for the concept.

My dream device does seems to be drawing closer and, when it does arrive, I suspect the person to put it in my hand will be Tablet PC aficionado Hugo Ortega. Hugo runs Tegatech Australia as well at his Uber Tablet blog. He's been supplying me with cool Tablet PC devices to review for several years, including the TabletKiosk Sahara Slate PC i215 pen and the TabletKiosk eo UMPC v7110.

This week in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald I reviewed the Raon Digital's Vega ultra mobile PC, again supplied by Hugo. I wasn't very impressed with it, turns out there's a big difference between an ultra portable and an ultra mobile PC. I shared my concerns with Hugo while I was reviewing the product, telling him it was his fault I was so disappointed because he'd spoiled me in the past with the good stuff. At least he took that as a compliment of sorts. I like to encourage people like Hugo who are embracing and supporting new technologies, but at the same time it's my job to tell it how I see it. I still think Tablet PCs have a lot of potential and I'm always keen to see what Hugo pulls out of his bag of tricks next.

If you consider a Tablet PC too big to be portable, but a PDA too small to be useful, then the new wave of mini tablets could strike the balance you've been looking for. Raon Digital's Vega is an ultra-portable PC, not to be confused with an "Origami" Ultra Mobile PC...

Read the full review at http://www.theage.com.au/news/upgrade/one-in-the-hand/2006/11/28/1164476144141.html

If there's one person not afraid to call the law an ass when it comes to technology in Australia it's Graeme Philipson, columnist in Next, the IT section of The Age & Sydney Morning Herald. Previously founding editor of MIS magazine and Asia-Pacific Research Director for Gartner, Philipson is one of those people who "gets it" when it comes to new technology. He is also one of those shouting from the roof tops that Australia is going backwards. Sadly no one in Canberra seems to be listening, but if Helen Coonan was to read just one column each week, she could do far worse than to read Philipson.

Anyway, last week's column on IPTV was dead on the money and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the future of the media, communications and technology. Perhaps I should print it out and send it to Coonan as a telegram.

Philipson writes; "If the Government was truly interested in media diversity, it would open up the many digital channels that the technology allows to anyone willing to pay for them, rather than restrict them to what existing broadcasters can already do with analog. Digital is capable of multichannelling, which the Government has prohibited to reduce competition and costs to existing broadcasters."

"These points have been well made by better observers than I. Fortunately, it matters little. All this government myopia and institutional stupidity and corporate greed will be swept away by technology within a decade."

The revolution Philipson predicts is certainly coming - the reports of online video cutting into TV viewing habits are interesting if not a tad premature - but the forces of myopia, stupidity and greed are so strong that it's still impossible to say who will win.

Today marks three months since Seeking Nerdvana entered the blogosphere and it's time to take stock. Writing a blog can become a hard slog after a while, especially when you post every day and tend to write long column-like posts rather than short snippets.

"I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking."
Alex Gregory's cartoon in the New Yorker is a great reality check for bloggers.

Looking around at other blogs by other IT journalists, the unpaid blogs tend to be a short post every few days. The paid ones still only tend to be short posts, just every day. I think what I provide is a better read, but that's probably because the others are smart enough not to put too much work into something that isn't likely to help pay the bills any time soon. I also think perhaps I'm missing the point of blogging, I think perhaps blogs are supposed to be short snippets that start conversations rather than long rants. I can't help myself, if I've got something to say I want to take the time to say it properly.

I've decide to take a few weeks off from blogging on Seeking Nerdvana from mid-December, but I'm still committed to Hydrapinion. Come the new year I'll evaluate what I want to do with Seeking Nerdvana. Feel free to leave me a comment if you're a regular reader (or just a visitor) to let me know what you think. What works? What doesn't? What place is there for Seeking Nerdvana in the blogosphere?

Mark Pesce wrote an excellent opinion piece on Australia's proposed copyright laws in The Age on the weekend - Attack the pirates, not the viewers.

"It is now clear that the laws would turn Australian copyright law into one of the most punitive, restrictive and regressive systems in the world," writes Pesce, but I fear that no-one in Canberra is listening. Once again people are shouting from the roof tops that Australia is being led down the wrong path by people who do not understand the technology they're dealing with, and once again those doing the shouting are being ignored.

"A restrictive copyright regime will simply produce a population with no respect for copyright. These laws must be junked. We need to start afresh."

Is anyone listening?