So I was looking at some other blogs on Blogshares after reading this post on jenett.radio.

BlogShares Fares
Ouch!  I just lost over $22k on this one… [jenett.radio]

The first thing I noticed was that it looks like the blog in question has been reindexed numerous times in the past week or so. Yet the last update for my blog on there is back in April 25th. I think they really need to work on their indexing engine a bit more.

As I was typing this I did a bit of index and it seems you can ping blogshares like you do weblogs.com, so I’m going to give that a try. We’ll see if things get updated more often now.

Dispatches from Revland points to a great alternative commentary for the Fellowship of the Ring DVD by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. I always suspected there was more to pipe-weed. Too Funny.

The previous post got me thinking of a conversation I was a part of last night online. We were talking about piracy and places people draw their own lines for what is ‘okay’ to download. One interesting area was downloading TV episodes. Is it okay to do? Is it any different than recording it to VCR. Nobody is charging to make episodes available. They are almost always at a poorer quality than TV. And in many cases there is no other way for a person to even see them (unless a friend taped it and lent them a tape). You might even make the argument that commercials should be left in so that there is some possibility of advertising revenue for the show. Though, once a show is out on DVD I definitely think it is wrong to download rips of that show, since it is now more of a product.

How about anime fansubs. Is it piracy to watch something that was only shown once in another country on TV that isn’t available on video yet? Including the commercials doesn’t really help, since people in other countries probably wouldn’t understand them (or even be a target audience). There’s a definite market for US and Japanese companies to co-produce shows and release them simultaneously (and it looks like this is close to happening). I know that my personal line is that I won’t download anything that’s out on DVD in the US. Given that sometimes it can take over a year between a show being licensed and actually being available on DVD in the US I don’t see there as being as much of a problem. And once again, video quality suffers with downloads. Recent viewings of some shows I originally saw as downloads is major proof of this.

Another recent Conference that was mentioned by Heath. This one was at MIT this past weekend.

What is the role of television in specific societies or regions today? How is this role changing? What part are digital technologies and new systems of communication playing in this transition? What are the likely outcomes of present trends? What are the darkest possibilities? What does the history of television in diverse countries and regions tell us about its possible futures? The third Media in Transition conference centers on television’s political and cultural role at the dawn of our new millennium. [Media in Transition 3: Television in Transition]

I thought quite a few of the abstracts listed looked pretty interesting. I’m still waiting for someone to write more about the growth of anime viewership in the US. Between places like Cartoon Network and TechTV and people downloading fansubs of shows I keep seeing more and more growth. With current technology and distribution methods it is possible to watch an episode of a show within days of it airing. I’d be curious to see how much of this occurs before someone realizes there may be a market for this.

George Bernard Shaw: “The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.” [Quotes of the Day]

So the last post I made. Where I mention Good Experience Live. Within 10 minutes of it being posted someone was hitting my site from Technorati having searched for links to http://www.goodexperience.com/gel/. The weird thing is I can’t find these links myself. I wonder if it’s something you get for using Technorati as a pay service. Still, that’s pretty damn fast.

Heath Row posted a whole buncha stuff from Good Experience Live. I wish I could have gone to this. I find a lot of this stuff really interesting. Hmm, how can I get involved with all this stuff? I was psyched to see that Ze Frank was there, I love his site (the Predate Confidence Builder is a favorite). Someday I’ll get a job that lets me go to things like this.

I was looking at some comments on Boston Common on Boston’s smoking ban that started today. I think it is going to be really interesting to see how this all works out. Now, I’m someone who doesn’t smoke, but up until recently never really minded it unless it was really bad. But that all changed a few years ago when I started having lung problems. Now even a little bit of smoke can cause discomfort. For the most part I just avoided dealing with this by not going out. But it was difficult. Friends would be heading out to see DJs or bands that I’d want to see and i really couldn’t go. Now I can, at least in Boston. I’m pretty psyched about it all. Time to rediscover Boston.

Now, we just need Cambridge to get the message too. Anyone else find it odd that Boston went no-smoking and Cambridge hasn’t yet?

Russell Baker: “People who say you’re just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately.” [Quotes of the Day]

From over on Scriptgoddess a link to a Movable Type Wiki. Pretty keen. I’m going to have to dig into this deeper tomorrow.