Gadgets Blog » Online Media

As a writer whose clients are primarily Internet based, I spend a lot of time using Skype to talk to people and get information, etc. It’s really an integral part of the Internet business lifestyle.

Yesterday morning, Skype wasn’t working. When I could log on, it couldn’t find the other friends on my list. I couldn’t chat, and all my meetings ended up getting canceled. The outage lasted throughout the day and wasn’t resolved until I got online this morning.

This was a universal outage that affected everybody, and for an intrepid writer like me, it put a cramp in my style. The problem was a software issue that hit their supernodes. The supernodes are what the program uses to recognize who of your friends is online.

The problem was mostly mixed by this morning, and more than 10 million people were already signed in, but it may still take a little while for some people to be able to get online. The company didn’t say how long it would take for the program to be 100 percent operational, but given the number of complaints, they it won’t likely be long.

The outage forced me to use that most archaic of human devices, a phone, to talk to people yesterday. I am writer, so typing away on a Skype message is much easier for me than having an actual phone conversation. (I know you can use Skype for a phone, but I don’t use it like that.)

I am not a big talker, whether in person or on the Internet. Being a professional writer primarily with Internet-based clients, I am often online chatting on Skype about one job or another, and I always notice the plethora of emoticons that are available to use.

As a writer, I have always been best at expressing my emotions through words and descriptions. It’s the stock and trade of my business and I have always found the use of emoticons a bit… well… annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I have fallen prey myself to the occasional smiley face and smooch kiss when my wife was chatting, but am I ever going to need the emoticon that bows or applauds?

Am I suddenly going to find myself on the receiving end of a digital karate fight and feel the need to offer my respect before we cyber battle? I don’t think so. Am I suddenly going to enter “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and have to fight off my wife’s seven evil exes? If I did, then I bet that ninja emoticon would come in handy.

Sometimes it’s not the emoticon itself that is annoying, but rather the frequent use of them. I understand that you may be happy while talking with me, but I don’t need to see a smiley face at the beginning and end of every post.

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I have talked before of my affinity for both Netflix and Hulu, but the online rental and streaming monolith that is Netflix is trying to eclipse America’s television alternative.

For those of you unfamiliar with both, Netflix started as a company that sent DVDs via mail, but quickly cornered the market on streaming movies and seasons of television shows online. They have old movies, B-movies, independent movies and even newer movies that make it to streaming relatively quickly.

Hulu is best known for running episodes of television shows online soon after air, and retaining at least three to five of a series’ past episodes for people that missed a few shows. They have movies, as well, but many are older.

In the past, these services were kept pretty much apart, since they each had their own niche. This is no longer the case. Netflix reportedly is willing to pay $100,000 per episode for television shows for next-day streaming rights, and I doubt that television execs are going to turn down the offer.

When DVR first came on the scene, networks and advertisers were livid at the idea that customers would be able to just fast forward through their ads after they had spent millions on them. As DVR became an increasingly larger part of television viewing, advertisers and networks begrudgingly softened their views and began to take DVR viewership into account.

The Internet has always been an advertiser’s dream. You have banner ads that never move an inch, you have videos that require you to watch the ad before it plays and you have pop-ups for everything from travel agencies to “male enhancement” pills.

There appears to be a change in how ads are being marketed these days to give people more of a choice in the ads they see and watch. In one of the biggest coups, YouTube has made ads optional for viewing after five seconds by clicking on a button. This move seems to be fine with advertisers, who seem to be more open to change in Internet ads.

This follows on the heels of Web sites like Hulu, which occasionally give people a choice of three options for advertisements, so viewers can pick the one that is most appealing to them. You may still have to watch it, but at least you get to pick the one that is most palatable.

I admit that I was a holdout on Netflix for a long time. I liked the immediate satisfaction of going to the video store and getting my comedy or action and adventure movies and not waiting a day or two for them to come in the mail.

When Netflix started streaming movies on the Internet, I decided to try out the system, but was relatively unimpressed. They had a decent amount of streaming movies, but all the new releases still had to come through the mail.

Now, not only are relatively new releases available by streaming, but a vast variety of little known and classic older movies are available as well. I don’t mind waiting a day or so for new releases, because there is always something new to watch on the streaming movies.

Apparently, that’s the problem. Netflix streaming accounts for about 20 percent of the total bandwidth use during peak hours of operation. That’s a lot of bandwidth, and people are beginning to notice. Recently, a company called Level 3 worked a deal with Netflix to deliver movies to the cable giant Comcast’s customers.

Television as we once knew it may be approaching its final days. Thanks largely in part to Internet sources for TV series and movies, the slowly emerging market of streaming-based TV content has become a prominent force in the electronics world.

Once just a distributor of by-mail DVD rentals, Netflix has solidified its place in the 21st century, providing the best quick-streaming services out there. Competitors like Hulu for TV and movies and VEVO for music have followed suit with a similar business model, leading to a whole new market of internet-TV streaming devices.

Apple and Google have both jumped on board this bandwagon, with Apple TV and Google TV bringing a wide variety of content to users thanks to TV set integration as well as standalone units. With titans such as these in the ring, is there even room for smaller companies? Boxee, a gadgets maker that has been utterly unknown save for a beta version of today’s product, may very well say yes.

Fame in the world of the Internet can come quickly, burn brightly and fade back into obscurity in a matter of seconds. With the emergence of online culture, memes and other must-see images and videos have the potential to spread like wildfire across the Web, passed through social networks on and off the Internet. The same could very well be said for Internet success. If the dot-com bust of the late 1990s taught us anything, it’s that a company has to be quick to adapt to changing expectations and demands in order to stay relevant for long.

Such a phenomenon explains the dramatic rise and fall of MySpace. Before the leviathan that is currently Facebook, MySpace seemed to be the Internet darling of the 2000s. With millions of users picking up pages, only to abandon the site in favor of the more streamlined world of Twitter and Facebook, the Web site is currently home to countless abandoned profiles. This week, for the first time in a long while, MySpace redesigned its template altogether, an announcement that didn’t drastically change the world in the way it once might have.

The focus this time around? Music and other media.

The world of the indie rock star has become a lot larger here in the 21st century. In a previous generation, a musician had to rely on slogging all over the country and playing shows to small crowds of people in the hopes of distributing a record and establishing fans. The Internet, obviously, has changed all that. Instead of touring, artists can interact with their fans completely online, taking their music to the masses. A number of Web sites have attempted to do this over the last several years, including (now defunct) Mperia, PureVolume and MySpace. None of them compare to Bandcamp.

Bandcamp is a music Web site designed for musicians and not for IT professionals. With its simplistic and sleek interface, uploading information to the site is an utter breeze. I gave the Web site a spin for my band’s latest record, having been told by the Internet what a smooth and easy-to-use venture it would be. I was not disappointed. After a simple registration process, Bandcamp immediately prompts the user to begin uploading music. The idea behind this is quite simple: quickly beam up a high-quality copy of the song you’d like, and the user can download at whatever bit rate they want.

In Apple’s staggering line-up of products, gadget after gadget has seemingly entered the public consciousness. Since the introduction of the iPod, Apple has built a 21st century empire based around a strong brand image. Their products are innovative and simple to use, appealing to users across all demographics. The iPhone, iPad, and their new line of laptop computers have made them a relevant company after languishing in Microsoft’s shadow throughout the 1990s. Earlier this week, in addition to updates to their flagship products, Apple unveiled a new vision for a product that has been less than stellar: Apple TV.

Its not that this is a particularly new concept, or one that Apple hasn’t made an attempt at before. Apple TV originally was a little-known product offered up by the company, a small box plugged directly into your television. The device could access a video store and the internet through a simple connection, enabling you to stream videos to your big screen. While the idea sounds great on paper, slow connection speeds and poor availability doomed the project in the early days. It enjoyed a small following, but nothing compared to other mainstays of their company.

The new Apple TV looks to fix a number of these flaws. In what seems an attempt to recreate the success of the iTunes Music Store with videos, the new device features a wide array of videos available for streaming. There is a bit of a catch, however. First of all, the user is only able to “rent” the videos, meaning that instead of downloading them to a permanent library, you’re forced to stream them off the internet instead. For users wanting a handy collection, the new Apple TV doesn’t seem to be the right choice. Surely there’s a better way to implement this television and video-watching from the Internet idea.