Technically Speaking

Yup, it’s time for a round up. I’ve been working today as you already know. Doing the social media person job. So even though I’d love to write more, these two items have a couple of good articles already, and figured you might want to know about them.

RealPlayer - Is finally doing video downloads. Here is the longer version, and then the short version.

Multiverse - $4 million for virtual reality worlds. That is quite a lot of money, and some off line places probably really wish they would have started an online business. Nevertheless, you have the short version, or the more concise long version.

Technically Speaking, more later or tomorrow! Don’t forget to play Jambaz before 12 midnight eastern time!!

It took awhile, but now YouTube and EMI are official partners

“With this deal, all four of the world’s major music companies are now official YouTube partners,” said Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-founder of YouTube. “EMI is a proven leader in the emerging digital music landscape and one of the world’s largest and most respected music companies. We’re excited to add EMI Music’s stellar roster of artists’ content to our site and make it available to our community.”

Is that the only real excitement here? No. It means that YouTube will live another day with this nice deal.

EMI Music has agreed to work with YouTube and Google to develop business models in which the YouTube community will be able to access user generated content featuring EMI-owned and copyrighted audio and video works. EMI Music will use YouTube’s industry-leading content management tools which feature a content identification and reporting system that will help EMI track and monetize its content and compensate its artists. YouTube’s content management tools also give EMI Music the ability to request the removal of EMI’s copyrighted content from YouTube.

My guess is if you use EMI content and make a spoof video of anyone at YouTube, Google, or EMI, they can remove it? That is a bit unclear, but it’s better then what YouTube had going for it before.

Its record labels include…. The Beatles, ….

Yes, their roster does include The Beatles. So when are we going to finally have them online?

Technically Speaking, this is a good day for YouTube.

Not really. It appears that Jason is dodging the issue that Allen posed in his great post yesterday. Jason is bicycling away like days back in Brooklyn growing up. Allen is not backing down, and he poses some great questions that Jason simply jumps on his bike like days from yesteryear growing up in the old ‘hood. Nice move Jason.

Allen did bring up valid points about Mahalo, and so do others. Why won’t Jason answer the calls? Why did Jason ride away on his bicycle all those summers long ago? It’s because he knows the only answer is exactly what Allen and others are already pointing out. Now I for one will give all new companies a chance. I love innovation, and even the occasional “make money now” scheme.

Technically Speaking, I believe that Jason needs to answer Allen’s pointed questions. I mean, why run Jason? You are no longer on the handball courts back in Brooklyn, just answer the question(s)! Now I have a question Jason – “WTF is Human Optimization?!?”

Google is now going offline in hopes to gain some momentum in a space once dominated by Microsoft. This is all good for business, but as some people are noting already, there seems to be issues with this offline application. What “people” are reporting this? Well it is Paul O’Flaherty a well respected blogger/podcaster from Denmark.

From what I am reading, he has done all the steps to fix this issue. Nevertheless, there still seems to be an annoying message about a connection error. Shouldn’t these bugs have been weeded out before rushing something to the mainstream to use? I would think so, but with competition as tight as it is, I can’t blame Google for wanting to release this.

Technically Speaking, I’m quite busy in the social media world right now. I thought I would drop a few lines noting the big offline achievement concerning Google. I’m sure others will try this, and have some results to post shortly.

I like what I’m reading here. It is now being taught as a college course, and that can only mean that soon we will see Rex Dixon teaching.

Ok, maybe I am dreaming, but I can see Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, Allen Stern, Pete Cashmore, Marshall Kirkpatrick, and many other big time bloggers making guest appearances all over the country.

If you currently are in disbelief of what you are reading, then read the next part here

The 90 students who take the spring 2008 class will study social media like blogs and wikis – while they themselves are studied by other communications researchers. They’ll complete some group assignments in virtual world simulation Second Life, and others in a traditional online forum. Ms. Barnes said she plans to look at whether the latter’s “no-nonsense” look leads to more-organized work, or if Second Life, “where you’ve got the visuals and the stray people,” better stimulates discussion.

Schools not traditionally known for their technology programs are also venturing into the study of social computing. For the past year, Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas has funded two research projects that use social-networking site Facebook to examine student retention trends, in part because the school noticed its students were already spending so much time on the site, said K.B. Massingill, executive director of the division that funded the research. A group of undergraduate students also studied faith-related conversations in Facebook and MySpace and presented their findings to what Mr. Massingill called an unusually well-attended faculty session. “We filled up the room,” he said.

Technically Speaking, if you need a good opening act, you know where to grab the siz’lator of the overkill hype machine known simply as Rex “Duff” Dixon. I’ll even wear the cowboy hat. Anyone still remember that one?

Allen really slammed Mahalo and for good reasons. I check things out as time permits, and I just did my acid test. Well what test is that? I searched for me, that’s what I searched for. “Rex Dixon“. Guess what? Not one result. Then below it, it has “our friends at Google“, which has it correct of course.

Where does this leave Mahalo? Is it Jason’s way of just jumping in and doing as suggested – the biggest SEO ploy site of all time? Maybe. I won’t go that far and say that, but others may be thinking that. I know that Jason or whoever when they read this will go “Who the heck is Rex Dixon?!?”

Well type it in Google, Ask, Yahoo, or whatever search engine that is out there today. You will find the correct results, stacked the way they should be. Why do I use it? Eight letters I have to type. It saves time, it’s easy for me to remember, and I know how to test a search engine.

Technically Speaking, if you can’t produce the same results that the big boys do, why bother? Allen is right, grandma and the rest of America will never jump on this idea. Let me know when you have “Rex Dixon” listed out like Google, Ask, Yahoo and the rest of the big boys and I’ll come back and check it out further.

Pluggd, a company who I did a short piece on has written even more on their chunking process. Apparently it raised some questions on the Pluggd end of things. I also noticed that I have talked about Pluggd very early in the history of this blog.

So what is up with this chunk search? Well they have broken it down even further. It’s pretty cool technology. It does get you to the parts of a video faster then say just hit and miss.

So what is the main excitement around chunking? They compensate, which is how they pick out the chunks. Searching for difficult names like the golfer “Vijay Singh” could produce this result:

Technically Speaking, if that entices you some more, then I have done my job here and I encourage you to read more on their latest post which explains chunking even further.