So: when you type ‘video downloads canada‘ into Google, take a guess as to what is in the top position. iTunes? Amazon Unbox? Xbox Live Marketplace? I mean, it’s gotta’ be something big right? The site of a large corporation who offer mainstream Hollywood movies and TV shows? Hell, at least it’ll be the CBC, offering free episodes of On the Road Again or Little Mosque on the Prairie? Right?

No, dear Canadians, if you, a resident of a country with one of the highest broadband penetration rates in the world, are out looking for video downloads, you get…. wait for it… This blog you’re reading right now. Specifically, this post.

And hey, from a totally neutral, unbiased perspective, this blog is awesome – possibly the greatest blog ever written, anywhere. I just, errr, don’t have any video downloads for you. And that, my friends, is a seriously sad commentary on the digital distribution business in Canada.

[Update]: Okay, now this blog is like #6 on that list – point still holds though, as Unbox – which isn’t available in Canada! – is #1]

Although I don’t usually do ‘product release posts’, I just wanted to quickly mention something about the new Samsung MP3 players, the YP-10 and the YP-2. What I think is super smart about these players is their Bluetooth integration: they will link to a Bluetooth phone and display/chime when you get a phonecall. Not only that, but the call will then be routed through your headphones while you can speak through the player’s built-in microphone.

How smart is that? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve missed a phone call or text message because I was listening to my MP3 player. This is precisely what tech is supposed to do – make your life more straightforward and convenient. Very smart stuff, particularly since the only better option is some obscure all-in-one device called the ‘iPhone’ – which isn’t available in Canada anyway…

(Image courtesy of crave.cnet.com)

Although I think I’ll post something longer on this later, for the time being I’m having an awesome conversation with myself over on Fimoculous. Join the pointless narcissistic fun!

You know, with totally not-cliché names like ‘CanTech’ or ‘Techmaple’ or ‘Northern something or other’…

It is a familiar experience for any Canadian technophile: you read an interesting news story on a Canadian website, get terribly excited (at least if you’re as nerdy as me), head off to Google it – only to then get equally disappointed when you learn it isn’t available in Canada. From the iPhone to DRM-free music, Canadian news sites continue to obliviously post stories that, while certainly interesting to Canadians, contain little direct Canadian relevance and I for one am getting a little tired of it.

The Globe and Mail is especially bad at this and incessantly post tech news and product releases from the US that are not yet available in Canada. While it must require quite a bit of labour to update all the AP/Reuters stories that come in, I’m guessing I can’t be alone in my increasing frustration about the lack of dedicated Canadian tech news site. About the closest I’ve found is the infrequently updated Digital Thoughts, which tends to focus on home video/audio and, to be frank, isn’t exactly as readable as Gizmodo.

So, where are the Canadian tech blogs? While there are plenty of good web analysis sites, why is there no actual Canadian version of Gizmodo and Engadget? Well, to that question, I have no real answer. It’s possible that no-one really wants to blog about Rogers updating their cable service to 7Mbits/s or Bell’s latest phone line-up. But wouldn’t it be great to have a centralised place for the rumours about the Canadian release of the iPhone? Or a deal of the day at Futureshop, Best Buy or Canada’s online tech shopping sites like Tigerdirect.ca or Anitec?

The solution, of course, will be some brave entrepreneur who’ll get tired to reading about these mythical ‘Tivos’ or iTunes movie downloads and start something up themselves. And while I would love to, I have enough trouble keeping SiW up-to-date (and ‘planning’ my move to WordPress).

So – any brave Canadian geeks out there ready to take the plunge?

Well, the August NPD gaming numbers are out and the usual hand-wringing begins. The focus of this month’s analysis is twofold: that the PS3 could not sell more than the 360, despite a price cut and Microsoft’s awful ‘red ring of death’ press; and secondly, the fact that the Wii pushed 425,000 units, even more than the money-printing DS.

The PS3 news I will leave to Sony to spin as they see fit. But as for the Wii: at the same time that I read these numbers, I was about to return to the stunning Bioshock demo, which is more impressive than most full games I’ve played. The acclaim for Bioshock has been universal, and I can understand why: the sense of atmosphere is astounding, and even the brief snippit of the game I’ve seen contains some clever, compelling writing.

This contrast – of the overwhelming success of the ‘casual’ Wii and the amazing achievement that is Bioshock – has got me thinking again about how the Wii might harm the state of gaming. As I’ve suggested before, the Wii’s populism is both its success and failure. By ‘aiming for the middle’, Nintendo have expanded the demographic of gaming exponentially, making the Wii so straightforward that my mum can play it. But in their pursuit of the mainstream, Nintendo have shifted emphasis in gaming from sophistication to accessibility, at a moment when gaming is poised to move from distraction to something resembling art.

To my mind, Bioshock throws a wrench into Nintendo’s plan, at least abstractly – the game’s insistence on pushing the limits of what gaming can do in terms of narrative, atmosphere and player freedom stands in stark contrast to Wii Sports. Yes, Wii Sports is fun and great at bringing generations together. But Bioshock forges an emotional connection with the player as it asks them to engage questions of political philosophy and bioethics while inventing novel ways to approach the game’s diegetic world.

So yes, it’s amazing that my 61 year old mother can play and love Wii Bowling; but celebrating the expansion of the gaming demographic at the expense of masterpieces like Bioshock is slowing the development of video games as a form and letting it continue to be simply a form of entertainment or distraction. While it’s true that there is nothing stopping someone making a game like Bioshock for the Wii (minus the glitzy UE3 graphics), Nintendo’s insistence on products like Wii Fit and party games means the economics of the industry will continue to move towards the casual. All the while, games that begin to approach film and literature in terms of their cultural relevance may fall by the wayside as market forces dictate that ease and accessibility become paramount. With gaming being the dominant cultural form of this generation, the focus on art that Bioshock delivers would be a terrible thing to sweep aside in the name of casual gaming.

I hope to post some more thoughts on Bioshock later, hoping to focus a bit on its political undertones – it’ll almost be like a literary review or something

A little while back, I invented/borrowed/stole the term ‘Web Capital’ to signify the online equivalent of cultural capital – essentially a set of markers that indicated one’s level of web savvy and success. I didn’t say it then, but I think what I was getting at was the relationship between a sort of online ‘cool factor’ and desire – that the more desirable something/someone seems, whether in terms of ‘coolness’, physical attractiveness or wealth/success/influence, the more likely you are to visit their web site and even buy something. As with cultural capital, the actual markers of status/wealth change, but their function doesn’t. About 2 months ago, a Pownce invite was like gold – now, nobody cares, which is very similar to the way a tan used to mean you were wealthy enough to go on vacation, but now simply means you can afford tanning cream.

And now, along comes Thotmarket, who might as well have just said “we’re taking this new-fangled ‘Web Capital’ idea and going totally literal with it!”. If you haven’t heard yet, Thotmarket is a virtual stock-market for websites; think of it like Digg, except with virtual dollars rather than a number of Diggs measuring success. The more people buy a given ‘stock’, the more its value goes up; it thus functions as a social bookmarking site. You can of course create your own Thot, as I did for SiW (go buy some shares!!!), or simply buy shares of people/companies/sites you like to measure/further their popularity.

What’s really neat about Thotmarket is the way it lays bare the connections between web popularity and desire/desirability, especially about how those things function in a social system like our own. We associate success with wealth; by linking web site popularity to a virtual stock market, Thotmarket seems to unintentionally do two things: first, it points to the way we associate economic success with cultural impact (i.e. box office receipts are indicators of a movie’s cultural influence as well as monetary success); and secondly, it suggests that all stock-markets are kind of irrational buying frenzies.

The overall effect though is pretty neat (if a little disturbing). Something about buying and selling shares resonates pretty strongly with our zeitgeist (too many movies from the 80′s?) and Thotmarket is definitely fun. Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.

In spite of the persistent negative buzz around the Playstation 3, I have long maintained that its value as a consumer item lies in much more than gaming. And at least in Europe, it seems that Sony agrees, as today they officially announced PlayTV, their TV Tuner/DVR add-on for the Playstation 3. Although less exciting for us North Americans (it’s only available in Europe), PlayTV essentially acts as a digital over-the-air tuner and DVR combo that piggybacks on the PS3′s storage and processing power.

Surpisingly, for a product made by Sony, PlayTV seems to do a lot of things right: it has 2 independent tuners, both of which are capable of Full HD; it automatically downloads updates from the Playstation Network, meaning that features can be added or refined down the line; unlike many DVR’s, the use of the PS3′s processor means that the on-screen guide will be fast and responsive; and perhaps most importantly, you can transfer shows to the PSP via USB, or just stream content – even live TV – over the internet. I don’t know if it’s just me, but that seems pretty close to drool-worthy and a seriously compelling reason to consider a PS3/PSP purchase.

This is the precisely the sort of comprehensive, consolidated vision that Sony has lacked for years. Previous attempts at integration – like adding a PSP section to Connect.com – were about as successful as Lindsay Lohan’s stays in rehab: it was often a step forward followed by about twenty steps back. PlayTV, on the other hand, uses the Playstation architecture to do things that no-one else offers. AppleTV doesn’t stream to portables, transfer or have a TV tuner, while Tivo cannot transcode and transfer to a portable device directly without the use of a PC. All of a sudden, the six or seven hundred dollar cost of a PSP and PS3 seems a lot easier to take, as in addition to, ya’ know, those game thingys, there is some solid entertainment value there as well.

Of course, this being a Sony product announcement, not all is peaches and cream: if you want in, you have to buy Sony. You cannot, for example, stream this content to a PC wirelessly, or plug an iPod into your PS3 and download shows – just like iPod/iTunes, Xbox Live Marketplace or many other digital models, this is yet another walled garden where a service is restrictively tied to hardware in order to drive hardware sales. That’s not to say it isn’t a smart business move – it just feels oh-so-typically ‘Sony’. And while no-one should really be surprised Sony is trying to get you to buy a PS3, it doesn’t make their dogged insistence on the proprietary any easier to swallow. It simply reinforces that the protection of business models often happens at the consumer’s expense, particularly in the transition period we exist in now.

‘Course, as everyone has mentioned, Sony’s North American division is only ‘researching’ this phase – the lack of a unified digital broadcast system here means that PlayTV won’t be quite as easy to release here, as there is no universal architecture to pin it to. I for one can’t help but chuckle a bit – in this case, the European insistence on government interference has left them with more consumer choice… Governments may not do free markets very well, but they can do infrastructure.

By now, everyone knows that Paramount has announced that it is dropping Blu-Ray support in favour of exclusively supporting HD-DVD. The reaction has generally been one of surprise – understandable, as no-one really saw this coming, particularly given the sales advantage that Blu-Ray has enjoyed over HD-DVD.

While one can argue back and forth over why Paramount/Dreamworks decided to do this – whether a rumoured $150 million incentive or simply higher profit margins – their decision will only have one result: slowing the uptake of hi-def discs and slowing sales overall. By adding further confusion to the marketplace, Paramount has only scattered sales of HD discs, preventing the buildup of any sort of critical mass. This ‘defection’ will add at least another year to the poorly named ‘format war’ (wouldn’t ‘format bitchslap-fest’ be more appropriate?), if not longer, and will do nothing to spur uptake or sales. If it meant more movies were available to more people, I wouldn’t be so annoyed; but this move means that the opposite is true.

And while I don’t buy the idea that downloads will surpass physical formats – at least until it takes less than five minutes to download a full film – they are increasingly looking like the better option: if your PC doesn’t support the file format, just go download the codec. ‘Cause just when you thought this format war couldn’t get any more like a soap opera…

[Btw, the image in this post comes from Anyworld]

Morgan Webb, co-host of TechTV’s X-Play, recently launched WebbAlert, a daily video show that rounds up tech headlines. Unlike X-Play – which I think is often annoying and juvenile – WebbAlert is solid stuff: it’s smart, concise and entertaining. Webb is a great host, who is obviously on top of her stuff and who can be both natural and professional in front of the camera.

The reaction to the show has been generally positive. Still – it’s been interesting that most of the posts I’ve seen inevitably make mention of Webb’s ‘babe factor’, noting her magazine appearances in Maxim and FHM and her status as ‘geek sex symbol’ (oh go google them…). Webb is hardly alone in this respect however; every prominent female geek, from Veronica Belmont to Cali Lewis to Amanda Congdon has at one time or the other been described in terms of how “hawt they are zOMG!!!!11111!!”

To my mind, the interesting question is why female personalities like Webb either feel compelled to market their sexuality or simply do so as a matter of course. I don’t so much want to get into questions of whether or not they should, as I don’t think it’s one I can adequately answer. When a woman appears in Maxim is she empowering herself by claiming her sexuality as her own, or is she objectifying herself? People far smarter than me haven’t been able to adequately answer this yet, so I’m not about to try.

But in terms of the ‘why’, I would argue that one of the undercurrents of Web 2.0 trends, from Dramatic Chipmunk-esque memes to the iPhone has been that of cultural capital – essentially, the display of markers of cultural savvy and status. In the current model online, people display their ‘web capital’ through the use and appropriation of memes, frequenting popular apps, networks and destinations, as well as the more traditional displays of wealth and success. If we approach the sexualisation of female web personalities from this mindset, the ‘swishy’ hair of Cali Lewis or provocative poses of Morgan Webb in Maxim make a heck of a lot more sense – display your desirability and you yourself become more desirable, driving traffic to your site. Whether it’s empowerment or objectification doesn’t really enter into the debate, as its effectiveness is the same. An important addendum is that this desire occurs not only in lustful teenagers, but also people genuinely interested in your content – ‘sexiness’ is just another reason layered on top.

The obvious point, of course, is that Cosmo is rather unlikely to have a spread of a scantily-clad Anil Dash, Om Malik or Jason Calcanis anytime soon. This need to make yourself desirable using your body is something that only applies to women. ‘Course, we can’t exactly act surprised: this double-standard preceded the Web by a couple of millennia and, if anything, the blogosphere is a place where sexism runs rampant rather than being challenged. Furthermore, if Web 2.0 has been commodified far more quickly than anyone imagined, then so have its personalities – to wit, if capitalist values underpin the business culture of blogging, social networking etc. then they also underpin its culture period.

So why am I picking on Morgan Webb? I’m not really. As an articulate, well-informed woman, I think she’s a pretty solid role-model for the youngsters who follow her. What does concern me a little, however, is the increasing sense that a woman’s only option is to sell herself in some fashion. From pop stars to movie stars to web stars, women’s sexuality is part of their marketability and without it, they are less desirable, regardless of their talent. While I still don’t have hard answers as to whether this is unequivocally ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – i.e. some will argue that this gives women a sort of power that men have no access to and are also subject to – I do think that some scepticism is a wise move. Anytime you have people becoming commodities, it’s a safe bet that something is probably wrong.

I know, I’m a little late to Anil Dash’s intriguing post “The Enterprise, Apple, and Insufficient Ambition“, but it definitely warrants a mention. In it, he argues that there is a false division between consumer- and business-focused technology. In the former, devices like the iPod aim to make the user-experience itself compelling; it is not just the function of the iPod that makes it desirable, but how one accesses/interacts with that function. Business-oriented tech, on the other hand, tends to focus explicitly on productivity – an approach that, on the surface at least, seems to make sense – often at the expense of usability. For reference, a family member of mine is still forced to use some DOS-based software at IBM Canada, where the right control key acts as the Enter key…

But Dash argues that such a mindset is both lazy and elitist, drawing an artificial line between work and home life, keeping interesting technology for those who are affluent enough to afford it on their own dime. It’s an interesting argument, and a refreshing one too . Rather than speaking for the blogger elite or the affluent technorati, Dash seems concerned with how the experience of technology – and the relative benefits of productivity and worker satisfaction – require a little bit of ‘redistribution’ so that people who can’t afford a $600 iPhone can still get that sort of smart, usable interface when they head to work. That way, not only is work more productive, it’s simply more ejnoyable.

I know it seems like I’m always criticizing everything, but I do wonder to what extent we actually want our work and home lives to become homogeneous. If one’s work life is characterised on some level by competitiveness, achievement and ‘measurements’, do we really want to make those two facets of our lives more similar? It’s true that Dash is arguing for going the other way, but can you really say ‘it’s your health that counts’ or ‘I’ll sacrifice this for my kids’ at your average corporate job? Probably not – and I think a key aspect of the post was the insistence that ‘[i]n the developed world, we spend most of our waking hours at work, and the impact is enormous”. Isn’t that sort of part of the problem – the overlap of the capitalist values of the enterprise and one’s life, so that competitiveness, achievement and consumption become part of day-to-day existence?

Still, it’s an interesting way to approach things, and the one thing you could never fault Dash for is his passion – that sort of conviction is rare these days.

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