How to download and save streaming videos

Media_httpdownloadwin_ahabu

"...Each video (and online game) site has different restrictions, so make sure your activities don’t violate any laws or user agreements. The YouTube terms of service (TOS), for example, are quite succinct:

“You agree not to distribute in any medium any part of the Service or the Content without YouTube’s prior written authorization. … You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.”

As far as I can tell, YouTube’s TOS doesn’t cover cases where a product (such as an iPad) is incapable of playing a video because of format restrictions. More about that in a moment.

What the YouTube TOS says you can do might not coincide with local laws. Is it illegal to record something playing on your computer, so you can view it at a later time? If so, why does YouTube have hooks that allow programs to download files? (Netflix, for example, is almost impervious to similar approaches because of the technology it uses.) The legal situation is murky at best. Caveat downloader...."

This I want: MultiMi aggregates your digital identities into a single platform (Wired UK)

Media_httpcdniwiredco_avcca

Excerpt:

"It's hard to get excited about a desktop app that unifies your various social media and email accounts, but MultiMi from Israeli startup Zbang and AVG is not your average aggregator.

MultiMi is a free Windows desktop app that allows you to combine all of your inboxes, social networking sites, chat applications, calendars, files and contacts in one place. So, in addition to having your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, you can have Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and any POP or IMAP email account, Google Docs, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Google Calendar, Box.net and your hard drive file system all accessible through the app. Google Plus is currently not supported, but as soon as it releases its API it will be. In fact MultiMi claims support any web-based service with an available API...."

OS X Lion to be sold on USB drives (via Wired UK)

Excerpt:

"...Far from ditching physical media for its OS X Lion release as we all expected, Apple will, from August, sell copies in stores on USB drives. And there we all were thinking OS X was the first download-only release. Sorry.

But it does make sense. Not everyone's home internet will be up to the 3.5GB Lion download. Of those people, some won't be able to take up Apple's "hey, come and use our store Wi-Fi" solution -- they physically might not be able to take their computer to this virtual "Lion Bar", or they simply might not have enough time to loiter in a shop while their operating system updates.

As well, not all Macs have an optical drive -- the MacBook Air, for example -- so discs could never be the solution for all Macs.

As a result, Apple needed its own backup plan for people left without their own backup plan. That backup plan, it transpires, is £55 USB thumb drive versions of OS X Lion, available at Apple stores from August 2011. It's a solution for the Wi-Fi-less, time-poor, cash-rich Mac user who needs Lion in their life...."

Must Read: The coming Cloud wars: Google+ vs Microsoft (plus Facebook) (Wired UK)

Today, social networks maintain your identity across a wide range of cloud-based services spanning multiple devices. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter aren't just providing you with the digital equivalent of your mailing address, but also your driver's licence, passport, car keys and credit cards.

At O'Reilly Radar, Edd Dumbill offers a helpful  anatomy of social networks' new functions:

  • Identity -- authenticating you as a user, and storing information about you
  • Sharing -- access rights over content
  • Notification -- informing users of changes to content or contacts' content
  • Annotation -- commenting on content
  • Communication -- direct interaction among members of the system

Dumbill calls this "the social backbone of the web." It's already a much bigger part of the tech ecosystem than any particular portal you may log into and stare at for part of the day reading status updates.

When Google's chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt  talks about Facebook's achievement, he almost never uses the word social. Instead, he talks about identity:

Fundamentally, what Facebook has done is built a way for you to figure out who people are. That system is missing in the internet as a whole. Google should have worked on this earlier. We now have a product called Google+, which has been in development for more than a year and a half, which is a partial answer to that…

I think that's the area where I would have put more resources, developing these identity services and ranking systems that go along with that. That would have made a big difference for the internet as a whole.

Very Cool: Five of the most impressive Kinect hacks (Wired UK)

Controlling Windows 7

Developer Wolfgang Herfurtner has used Kinect to control various elements of Windows 7. A video shows him whizzing around and zooming into a 3D game world just by making intuitive gestures. Then he navigates his desktop without a mouse, and interacts with photographs - pinching and zooming and moving - like Microsoft Surface, just without the Surface.

Finally, he writes out the word "Hello", just by flicking his finger in mid air. The on-screen representation is crazily accurate, replicating his finger movements perfectly.

Adaptation indeed! A Whole New Market In Pictures: Star Wars goes Cubist (Wired UK

Media_httpcdniwiredco_hyjat

Excerpt:

"...Once the much-maligned painting style of Absinthe-fuelled bohemians, Cubism has been given new life by American artist Tommervik.

The muted tones, strong lines and graphical shapes Tommervik creates are strongly reminiscent of the figures and still lifes pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque at the turn of the 20th Century. However, there's not a bottle or a guitar in sight in these images, which instead transform the world of Star Wars into abstract oils on canvas.

Over the last year Tommervik has started to add paintings of Star Wars characters to his repetoire of sportsmen, bears and Pee Wee Herman, to name but a few. He's now racked up quite a collection, the majority of which you can view in our gallery, below, which reflects a childhood fascinated with the Hollywood franchise.

Tommervik told Wired.co.uk: "Star Wars impacted on my life at an early age. I remember all the neat toys, and remembering them and my childhood inspired me to paint."

Interestingly, the artist relies entirely on these vintage toys and his imagination as the reference point for his paintings, saying his craft gets in the way of any pop-cultural film research: "I don't remember which Star Wars film was my favourite. It's been such a long time since I watched the films -- I'm often too busy painting."...

Netflix Planning Euro Launch in 2012 | Home Media Magazine #infdist

Netflix Planning Euro Launch in 2012

18 Jul, 2011 By: Erik Gruenwedel

Aggressive expansion/price increase underscores company’s intent at “killing off” disc rental ASAP, analysts say.


Netflix is quietly laying the ground work for expansion into Spain and the United Kingdom by the first quarter of 2012, according to a report citing foreign film distributors.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix, which recently said it would launch streaming service to 43 Latin America countries, including Mexico and the Caribbean by the end of the year, has long intimated expansion of streaming service across the Atlantic, according to an investor letter in April and comments by CEO Reed Hastings at various fiscal presentations.

Expansion into Europe – once considered Netflix’s first foreign venture until it bowed service in Canada last summer – appeared cut off at the pass earlier this year after Amazon bought the remaining interest in Lovefilm – the United Kingdom’s largest by-mail rental disc and streaming service. Indeed, Lovefilm has reportedly increased staffing by 20% in its own expansion efforts into Germany, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, according to Variety, which first reported Netflix’s Euro invasion.

Such activity probably won’t deter Netflix, which has always considered Amazon (and less so Google) as its major competitor going forward due to the online retail behemoth’s strong physical and digital sellthrough business.

Meanwhile, launching streaming service in Spain is considered less of a challenge due to a dearth of competing services in the country and that Netflix’s establishment of a Spanish-language database and digital network in Latin America could easily be expanded into Western Europe’s largest geographical country.

Whoot! Indie horror film premieres on Facebook's FlickLaunch - latimes.com #infdist

Reuters

July 15, 2011, 3:25 p.m.


LOS ANGELES (TheWrap) - Horror thriller "The Perfect House" will be the inaugural film to premiere on FlickLaunch, the first independent-movie distribution platform built on Facebook.

The film, a haunted-house anthology that tells three separate stories using different horror-film techniques, will debut on FlickLaunch on October 1 as a seven-day, $5 rental accessible through its Facebook page.

further deets:

"...The debut was announced on Friday by FlickLaunch and by the makers of "The Perfect House," which stars Monique Parent, Felissa Rose and Will Robertson and is directed by Kris Hulbert and Randy Kent.

FlickLaunch was designed to be a simple platform that independent filmmakers can use to upload and stream their films quickly and easily, receiving up to 70 percent of the revenue. The films can be viewed full-screen directly on Facebook, and stopped, paused and resumed within the rental period..."

Simon Pulman on Jeffrey Katzenberg & Asking The Right Questions | Transmythology

Jeffrey Katzenberg & Asking The Right Questions

Jeffrey Katzenberg was interviewed by Fortune yesterday about the developing shape of the movie industry and the media landscape more broadly. For the uninitiated, Katzenberg is a former Paramount and Disney executive who was largely responsible for rejuvenating Disney’s animation division (read this, and this); he is now CEO of Dreamworks Animation and a member of Zynga’s Board of Directors.

Fortunately, the entire transcript of the interview is posted on Fortune’s website. While it constitutes valuable reading overall, I want to concentrate on a few of his observations, because I believe that they reflect a vitally important issue that will continue to impact the entertainment industry over the next decade. First, Katzenberg on viewer habits:

And so we have what is for sure a systemic change in consumer habits with regard to how they consume movies.  And what we haven’t yet found is what is that new model [is].

In the interview, Katzenberg is largely contemplating – as is typical of Hollywood – new distribution forms for existing content. However, I wonder if he hasn’t subconsciously hit on something more significant than streaming and bundling that affects movies on a broader creative level and promises to impact Hollywood’s relationship with its audience profoundly.

The World is Changing

In January 1991, Katzenberg wrote a now famous memo to senior Disney executives discussing the state of the movie industry. If you haven’t read the memo (and you should, because most of it is still highly relevant) titled “The World is Changing: Some Thoughts on Our Business,” it’s here. Within, Katzenberg discusses economics of the film industry, the need to reasonably contain costs, the unique nature of the theatrical experience, and a need to focus on story.

It’s that last point – story – that I think needs to be examined.