TickleSpace - iPhone App & Drupal Developers

Movie Downloads: iTunes v. The Rest:

For now, I think I’ll continue using DVDs to archive my favorite movies, but rent digital versions of the ones I just want to see once. What I’d really like to see in this category is a digital Netflix service that automatically rents, downloads, and deletes movies from my computer for a flat monthly fee.

The dvd clearance bins at Walmart and smaller local stores have great prices on movies. Blockbuster is just down the street. So what will movie downloads do for me? Precious little. From what I have read, I see two key problems with all the offerings:

1. DRM: DRM can't work for me, it never will. If I pay for it, it is mine to do as I please. I as an informed consumer don't want it.
2. Price & Convenience: If I have to spend time downloading to acquire the product, then it takes up valuable space on my drive, I better save alot of money! I'd say $1.99/movie max. Since most movies in the clearance bins are around 5-10 bucks, I do not see how mastering, boxing and shipping a product can cost as much as a download. Why I should pay so much when they are really are so inconvenient to own?

I'll stick to the DVDs for now. Best bang and flexibility for my buck. Movie downloads offer me nothing.
Technorati Tags: DRM, movie downloads

Email has been a reliable form of communication for many years but, in the last 10 years, thanks spam and phishing email is dying.

Email worked because it was a quick and sure way to communicate with individuals over the net. Spam and phishing concerns attack the two key things in any communication medium:

1. Know who you are talking to. Thanks to spam, you can't tell if the email you receive is from a real human that knows you or has real reasons to contact you.

   With phishing you have emails that look genuine to trick you into performing some act.

2. Know that you are being heard/read. If you send out an email, there is no longer any real guarantees that the recipient has received it.

If you can't receive real genuine emails, can't be certain if the recipient will get your message, and are afraid to share your email address with others, why bother with email at all?

This rant was caused by years of watching the email platform crumble and this article at Techdirt -
When You Can't Tell The Phishing Emails From The Legit Ones, Just Ignore Them All

I think it is time to look for new options...any ideas?

Well after 3 weeks of growth, thanks to labour day weekend and construction at my house, I didn't get to water my pet.

It died. *sob.

After my last post the pet never grew more fur etc. It would be nice if someone made a vine dashboard that grew all over the other widgets or something...that might be more exciting.

I installed Chi Pet on my dashboard. Several pets have died...but I have refused to uninstall it. The deaths were cause by the fact my laptop sleeps over the weekend, and on Monday morning....I find my little guy upside down, dead.

But this past weekend, I took time to wake my machine, water the little guy and put it back to sleep. *sigh*

So yesterday, it was still alive and I was rewarded with a lush Pet....see for yourselves.

We'll see what happens over the next weekend.

This diamond mine in eastern Siberia (Mirny, to be exact) is so deep that the surrounding "air zone... is closed for helicopters" after "a few accidents when they were 'sucked in' by downward air flow..."

You can find more pictures and details about the mine here

I found the little city next to the big hole...uhmm interesting.

We can now all marvel at the result of all their hard hard work.

Thanks everyone that has helped get us to this point. Without your feedback Otavo would not be what it is today.

Techcrunch's Take on Otavo
Mashable's Take on Otavo

those are the first two I found this morning.

So go on, read about Otavo, sign up and give it a spin, and have fun.

Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search, Part 2

Written by Ebrahim Ezzy and edited by Richard MacManus. Ebrahim is lead developer and co-founder of Qelix Technologies, the company behind a search 2.0 contender called Qube. This is the second in a 2-part series of posts.

Ebrahim does a wonderful job of covering many different innovations being explored.

Ebrahim thanks for the mention. More news and announcements coming soon.

The new technorati look is nice but, I am going to miss a nice functionality that used to exist in the old interface.

When you did a search, you could click on any of the buttons in the green bar and it would switch your search to the selected type....But now, you have to change the dropdown and hit search.

So we now have several steps when we used to just have one.

I'll miss that interface feature but am happy to see the technocrats turning 3. I'll need a few more days to decide if I like the new look. Regardless happy anniversary Technorati.

Some noticed the search issue too.
Dave's rundown on the changes