In A Switch, Hulu Will Stream Remaining Presidential Debates Live; Premiere A Film | paidContent.org:

Hulu is premiering a film: documentary Crawford, about the effects of the George W. Bush presidency on his adopted hometown.

Hard to tell how much of a strategic evolution this is, although clearly Hulu and its partners are ambitious.

As a Canadian, I'm a bit late to the Hulu game. Nevermind that when I arrived at the game, I had to sneak in under the fence because Canadians (well all non-Americans) aren't welcome at the Hulu game.

After installing a workaround that makes Hulu think I'm a red-blooded American, I'm quickly becoming a regular Hulu user.

Last night, while lying in bed getting caught up with Fringe, a new series that I'm slowly getting interested in, I realized that Hulu is clearly on the right track with their service.

At first, I was kind of down on Hulu - after all, streaming kind of sucks, and I don't get to keep a copy of what I'm watching. I have an innate hostility towards Big Hollywood that stems from their irrational fear of their users. The iTunes store is a way better model - I get to *download* stuff and keep it!

But somewhere between the second and third commercial break last night I realized that Hulu really is where Big Hollywood should be going. The iTunes Store is a bit of a dead end for them. Not because its owned by Apple, but rather, because it is rooted in an old way of thinking.

If you look behind the scenes of both services, stripping away some of the shiny veneer, you quickly realize that there are only two material differences between these two services a) who pays for the content and b) where the bits are stored.

Apple requires me to pay for the content and I get to store the bits on my harddrive. Hulu gets advertisers to pay for the content and they get to store the bits on their harddrive.

Now I'm a big believer in innovation continuity - i.e. those services that provide innovation along a vector that is most consistent with existing user behavior are best positioned for success. In other words, if you want to win, don't ask users to do something that they aren't already doing.

The iTunes store fails in this regard. Users don't pay for individually wrapped television programming today, and they don't care where bits that they haven't created are stored (really, they don't. Anyone that tells you otherwise is making stuff up. Go ask your Dad if you don't believe me, unless your Dad is Doc Searls, then you can ask my Dad as a proxy) - so long as those bits are readily accessible.

Hulu, on the other hand, nails this perfectly. Users get to browse a deep selection of content interactively, select what they want to watch and within seconds, their chosen content is on the screen in front of them. It is one of the best examples of "on demand" media delivery that I have seen yet - sure it just rips off Youtube and the gang, but so what. There is a difference between user generated content and the stuff that professionals do. I'm looking forward to the day when those lines have been further blurred and we're well on the way.

But, in the meantime, I'm selfishly looking for a better way to digest my TV and Hulu currently provides me with the best experience, bar none. Long live the cloud!

I like reading Doc. Sometimes he writes stuff that just completely nails it. He's got a way of peering through the leaves and rooting out exactly what matters most. That's what happens when marketing guys get technology.

Today he wrote something completely awesome - its my favorite-est Doc piece ever.

Doc Searls Weblog: Dancing on fire:

...it's getting me high, just from the driving energy of the song. Beats thinking about death, which comes easy when you're 61 with a fever, a gut, and a history of exercise that consists mostly of getting dressed. But music helps. Music is the best evidence of immortality that we have.

See, music is my passion. I love it. Not necessarily the words, but what the music evokes. Sometimes its the words, sometimes its the melody, sometimes the beat. Sometimes, the best times, its the space between the notes - the anti-music - that means the most to me.

I really like Doc's post today because he takes us on a mental trip sparked by music. This is exactly what great music is supposed to do, and I'm thankful that Doc was able to share this with us.

My first attempt at blogging: OpenSRS - The Alternative Domain Registrar Service

Hah. I had totally forgotten about this. No permalinks, no comments, no trackbacks - but this is definitely a blog circa 1999. Neat.

This is certainly one of the earliest examples of corporate blogging that I'm aware of.

Got off the plane at 6:30 or so this morning, coming in from Vancouver.

7 years ago, I was flying in from Uruguay, via Chicago. Got off the plane shortly after 9 to the news that a small plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Quickly I learned that the plane was much bigger, that it wasn't really a crash and that it had happened again. With a bunch of my colleagues in the air, going home from the same meeting, many flying into New York, I was immediately sick to my stomach.

The airport was pretty quiet this morning, but that could just be a coincidence.

I think I've figured out what was wrong with the network.

For some reason, a long time ago, I turned on IPV6 for each of the network interfaces on my Macbook Pro - both wired and wireless.

Turning off IPv6 for each interface fixed the data rate issue I was seeing.

I guess that because my old Linksys didn't support IPV6, the issue didn't present itself until another IPv6 capable device started chattering on the network (the Airport Extreme supports IPv6). Turning off all IPv6 support immediately fixed the issue.

I've since re-upgraded the firmware on each of the Airport Express' and the Airport Extreme, turned back on Wide Channel support, upped the multicast rate, etc. And each step of the way, the network performance was awesome.

I'm sitting here now listening to Led Zeppelin over Airtunes and I'm still getting approximately 5mbps down and 500kbps up.

Awesome!

I'm stumped.

I just installed an Airport Extreme base station (802.11n w/ GigE) and three Airport Express base stations (802.11n).

The three AExpresses are simply running Airtunes and do not extend, repeat or bridge the network.

The problem I'm seeing is that data rates are terrible. I'm getting a good signal, and theoretically, everything should work fine, but data rates are just rotten and I can't figure out why.

The weird thing is that the data rates are good enough to run Airtunes without any stutter or gapping in the music. If the network was screwed up, then I would assume that all data transmission would be equally bad.

I'm using a MacBook Pro w/ an "N" enabled built-in Airport card for my observations. The data rates are equally poor whether I'm sitting in front of the Extreme or in another part of the house and noise on the network seems to be within acceptable levels throughout the house.

I've tried moving back to the 7.3.1 firmware for all the devices, but the problem persists.

I've tried different channels, changing to a pure "N" configuration, moving to 5ghz and toggeled both Interference Robustness and Wide Channels, all to no avail.

Data rates when I'm tethered are awesome, so this isn't a WAN issue.

I should also note that my Linksys G router always performed flawlessly, so I'm skeptical that the environment might be a source of interference.

I'm stumped.

Does anyone have any ideas? I really don't want to call Apple on this one - I think it would be too painful!

...I've been doing a lot of blogging, just not here.

Check here, here and soon, here.

Of course, friendfeed has the full "firehose".

Gotta say, iTunes + iPhone Remote + Airport Express rocks hard.