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Blu-Ray: Not So Fast

by Andrew McCaskey
New York Times and others are starting to raise some interesting questions regarding not only the future of downloaded content, but the future of the Blu-Ray format.

It’s strange to have this sort of discussion just a few weeks after the victory of Blu-Ray in the HD delivery marketplace contest, but you may want to realize that there is a precedent in all this: The LaserDisk.

It never acheived more than 2% of the households in the US, ending up as a high end format for early adopters and videophiles, while the bulk of the market stayed on the VHS bandwagon. In a chicken and egg scenario, titles were comparatively few and the physical delivery, inventory and stocking remained challenging.

Fast forward and consider that the ubiquitous DVD plays on devices as lowly as the Walmart doorbuster specials at the $30 price point. Consider also the nearly universal market acceptance and the fact that many if not most consumers ( especially if they have a unscaling player) cannot tell the difference between DVD and HD content.

Blu-Ray has about five years to blow out these units approaching the $30 pricepoint, and bye the way also convert the back catalog of maybe 10,000 movies currently on DVD and make sure those new releases are there as well.

From the company that tried for five years to push the market into proprietary memory sticks in the chewing gum format, there’s not much chance of that.

And Verizon is laying fiber while Comcast awaits DOCSIS 3.0 with 100Mb/sec downloads.

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Obsolete Skills

by Andrew McCaskey
I almost used the item from Robert Scoble in the show yesterday- but I am glad that I waited a day because all sorts of interesting lists sprung up on the Obsolete Skills Wiki in 24 hours.

If you have been kicking around the technology arena for fifty years (I started young), you will have picked up a good number of the items on the lists. In fact, many if not most were hard won by training and experience, a source of considerable pride.

After years of training to conserve memory and conserve bandwidth, it’s hard to shift gears into a world where in the main memory is free and bandwidth is free. In fact, the phrase and skill “shifting gears” is in itself obsolete.

Memory and bandwidth may be close to free, but the skill of removing complexity is still in demand.

Click to view videos submitted or recommended by other SDR podcast listeners. . .

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Nozbe Steps Up to the Plate

by Andrew McCaskey
You have heard me enthuse about Nozbe since early January – and it’s time to give you some insight into a problem – and how it got solved.

About a week ago we had a news item speaking of the security risk from a number of web sites that, once you register for an account send you a confirming email with your account name and password in the clear. All four pieces of information- the existence of an account, your email contact info, your longin and your password were residing in mail servers just ready for a compromise.

The next morning, I had an email from a long time listener – I mean a listener who was a fan of the music track at the end of the news section of the program – who asked if I got the ironic twist to that story.

To my embarassment, he informed me that Nozbe was one of those sites. To be honest, I had not remembered my sign up with Nozbe from months before – but sure enough, there it was – in the clear. You were free to change your password and that revision would not be sent until you requested it – but – if you continued to use the original password you selected, there was a potential security hole you could drive a truck through.

I sent an email immediately – February 13th – to Michael Sliwinski, the Founder of Nozbe

“Michael, we have a problem”. Other emails followed, and I am happy to report that the build of Nozbe that is being loaded tonight has removed the problem – and is no longer sending the password out in the confirming email.

That’s the sort of the direct communication and responsiveness that I’ve experienced with Nozbe, and I feel sure that it’s the sort of support that will continue to be available to every Nozbe customer.

Click on the Nozbe link at Slashdotreview.com

Click to view videos submitted or recommended by other SDR podcast listeners. . .

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A Nozbe Benefit – Web Based GTD

by Andrew McCaskey
Over the years, I have tried various editions and tools for implementing the David Allen process for “Getting Things Done”

Like other tools, the best one is probably the first one that you learned to use – and if the Palm III was still working, and my eyes were a little bit better, the system that I had about eight or nine years ago on Windows NT would be just about perfect.

Problem is, the new translator never did seem to work on the XP -Palm V version, and the new screens in color had me envious. Then the iPhone for Christmas sealed the deal – I had to find a new GTD tool.

You’ve heard me mention this for several weeks, and I can report that I am a Nozbe user. I’ve been amazed at how useful a web based GTD application can be. First, no matter which online machine I am on – Mac, PC or the day job laptop – I just keep a browser tab connected to Nozbe. Any update, action or item gets instantly updated -and wherever I am I have a full view of work, podcasting and personal projects and actions.

And, when I am away from a net connection I can access Nozbe through the iPhone or carry a paper list automatically generated by Nozbe for around town errands.

Nozbe is a simple web-based gtd software, so you don’t need to install anything on your computer
- just sign up for a free account and log in to manage your to-dos, tasks, notes and projects.

Click to view videos submitted or recommended by other SDR podcast listeners. . .

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In case you haven’t figured it out, I am REALLY happy with my new account at Nozbe. Once I looked at the site and figured out the UI, in a few hours I converted from a trial to fully subscription so that I could add multiple projects.

I am now close to seventy projects that I am tracking, as I add in all of the day job tasks as well. Now I have personal, day job, and podcasting all in the same place – and I am getting things back under control and becoming much more confident that I am getting things done and not missing critical deadlines.

I just read this on the Nozbe blog :

Jott links to Nozbe – dictate your tasks and notes
Wednesday, 16. January 2008

Jott is a great service that enables you to dictate your thoughts through your mobile phone and have them sent to your email address or someone else as text message.

Nozbe is a great web application for getting things done that helps you stay on top of your productivity.

Combining Jott and Nozbe gives you a powerful productivity suite. It’s like having a virtual secretary!

Now you can dictate your tasks and notes!

The power of Jott is just great – you phone a toll-free number and record a message that gets translated into a text that… can be added as task or note to your Nozbe account – to any project you want!

Michael ( the Nozbe developer) continues:

. . your Jott message is short, the Jott text will be added to your project as an action. If it’s a long message – it will be added as a Note to the same project. This is very powerful. You’ll be able to dictate ideas and thoughts to your Nozbe without ever losing them!

Note that it may take a few minutes for your Jotts to appear in Nozbe, because Jott needs a while to translate the speech to text. However during our tests the Jotts appeared in Nozbe after a minute or two, so there is no long waiting involved.

I recommend this book (and the free Nozbe implementation) because it has been an incredible help to me managing the demands of a daily podcast, travel, day job, and home responsibilities. Please give it a try – I think that you will find that after 30 days, you will be more productive, feel more in control, and better able to manage your day to day tasks.