Jan 31, 2009
Over on the side collumn I’ve always kept a list of blogs that some of my friends keep up (or don’t keep up) and there are a few new additions I wanted to bring up.
First is a blog of my friend Mike who has recently graduated from law school and is preparing to take the bar late in February. To prepare he has taken a month of off work and is going to track his study and daily progress/thoughts while preping in his blog. As an added bonus he has decided not to shave for the entire time. Check it out at Bearded for the Bar
Lastly I have finally finished designing our “family” website and transitioning it from our wedding blog. You can track and follow Kate and I over at TimandKateAnderson.com. Like I said in the past, I’m not exactly sure how this will impact my posting here. Most likely not at all as I have two separate goals and aspirations for both sites.
That is all.
Jan 26, 2009
I’m currently in the process of making a 1:1 trade with a person on the other side of the country. We connected for our trade via craigslist and therefore have no idea who the other person truly is other than the email they use. Like nearly all trades I do on craigslist I google searched the name of the guy who responded. Since his name was a very uncommon one, I was instantly provided with his public facebook page, his Bebo profile and some high school information. I was able to see his music and movie preferences, what he looked like, who he was dating, when and where he went to High School, how he conversed with his friends and even some information about a relative possibly his older brother.
This got me thinking about how having a common name, actually provides some amount of anonymity and with that a little bit of added security. If someone google searches for my name, there are 100s of Tim Andersons out there on the internets. Now granted, my presence on social sites probably makes me pop up a little more often, and if you search out the name I use as this website’s domain and on other sites you are provided instantly with a lot of information about me. But in general, if you have a more common name, it is less likely that someone can simpley google just your name and find out information about you. Alternatively, if you have a very uncommon name, you are probably easily searchable. Either way, it was an interesting reminder that you should be sure to protect your public identity on the internet.
Dec 9, 2008
Last week, I went ahead and purchased a trial subscription to two entertainment models. I’m currently subscribed for 14 days of Microsoft’s Zune Pass subscription, and Netflix 1 at a time plus unlimited streaming subscription. I like both services a lot and the integration with the Xbox 360 is nice (although it has room for improvement). Let me give you a quick run down of both services.
Zune pass is Microsoft’s subscription model for streaming music. It costs $14.99 a month and as long as you have an active subscription you can play (on up to 3 PCs) any songs from their vast library. You can also download these songs and load them onto a DRM approved device (like the Zune) for the duration of your subscription. Along with the monthly access to the entire library, Microsoft added a new element that lets you download and keep forever, 10 songs per month. The biggest gap in this service which I didn’t realize wouldn’t work until I actually tried it, is that you cannot access the Zune Marketplace via the xbox 360 console. This means that you can’t browse and stream unlimited music directly from the xbox, a huge oversight in my opinion since most people would love to be able to select and play any music in their main entertainment room instead of just the room they have a PC in. Other than that, there are a lot of nice features about the Zune pass and Zune marketplace (social playlists and channels) that have me debating moving to a subscription based model for my music needs.
With the newest version of the Xbox 360 UI, Xbox Live Gold members and members of certain Netflix subscription plans can now access a large library of streaming content directly on their Xbox consoles. I have tried this for a few days and it is implemented very well. On the netflix website you select which movies you want to show up in your “instant queue” on the xbox, and once you navigate to the Netflix section on your console you get a nice interface that lets you play and watch the content you selected. The standard streaming quality is very acceptable and some features are available in HD which looks very nice. The best “instant queue” selections are mostly limited to Documentaries, Indie films and TV shows, but there is a large selection of almost anything you could want, and the most basic plan at $8.99 allows for you to have 1 DVD (or BluRay) out at a time to fill the gap. A couple of improvements I would like to see are allowing you to browse the entire netflix instant library via the xbox console to add films to your queue, more HD content, and also better sound on the higher quality films. It seems I am only limited to 2 channel audio, which is unfortunate.
With these two media subscriptions, Microsoft and Netflix really have a nice fulfillment of my music and movie needs. This got me thinking, with a few of the improvements I listed above (most notably the Zune Marketplace accessible on the Xbox 360 console) Microsoft could easily offer a single subscription model that would compete and go beyond anything other media service providers currently offer. Imagine if you had following options.
- Xbox Media Pass Basic – 1 month xbox live gold, netflix streaming, and zune pass streaming $20/month
- Xbox Media Pass Mid-range – 1 month xbox live gold, netflix streaming + 1 at a time, zune pass + 800 MS Points – $30/month
- Xbox Media Pass Deluxe – 1 month xbox live gold, netflix streaming + 3 at a time, zune pass + 1600 MS Points – $50/month
The price points can be adjusted some, but you see where I’m going. I would be very VERY interested in purchasing one of these plans, and even possibly a yearly subscription if it was given at a discounted rate. The other adjustment that would have to be made according to how I have the model laid out, is that Microsoft would have to make their point system universal. 800 MS points would be good on the Xbox console or Marketplace for purchasing game or video content and good on the PC or Zune for purchasing individual tracks or whole albums. I really think if Microsoft was able to combine these services and integrate them well, they would really start to separate themselves from everyone else in both the console and media offerings marketplace.
Sep 3, 2008
For those of you who don’t know me well enough in my personal life, I have recently married and with that temporarily moved to Nashville, TN while Kate (my wife) finishes up Grad school. We plan to switch over our wedding site, www.timandkateanderson.com from what it is now, to more of a life site where we can keep family and friends who don’t see us reguarly up to date. I’m not sure what that will mean for my site here. I’ll probably just end up writing more geeky and techy posts when I find the time. I’ve found that most of what I tend to want to relay, in general can be expressed in 140 characters or less.
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