Underground Media: Reloaded

I was going to review netbooks for my next Urban Thought Collective blog, but screw that! I just installed Boxee on my HTPC, and although it's got a few bugs, I am FEELIN IT! Boxee is an internet startup that continues to get millions in venture capital, even *with* the current economic downturn. (That should tell you something.) The software is a quick download that, once installed, turns your PC into a TV that streams programming (youtube, hulu, Apple movie trailers, etc.) from the internet, your harddrive, your home network, or whatever. Sound like Apple TV ? Well it is, except you BYOH (bring your own hardware). There are a few other competitors in this space, but even as alpha-level software, Boxee STILL outclasses them all! At least it does for me, in the 15 minutes that I've played with it. We'll see how I feel in 24 hours...

And I mean YOU, all you Blackberry Storm haters! No it is NOT the iPhone, so quit talking about how it's NOT LIKE the iPhone. Yes, some crappy review phones were released into the wilderness. That does suck. But I have used ACTUAL consumer units and I have not experienced the much talked about lag. I LOVE the click when you type or intentionally open an app. How tough is that concept to understand??? Touching highlights or selects, clicking opens or executes. And after using both the iPhone and the Storm, I have to tell you that my typing was 1000% more accurate on the Storm! The iPhone is a toy that some people are trying to convince themselves is a business productivity tool. The Storm is a business phone with some eye candy on top. Feature comparisons are stupid as the target audiences for each phone are different. And for the record, I think the Storm is WAY cool. (Couldn't you tell from my tone?)

"No, I don't have television." That's when I get the really weird looks. The response is usually, "Seriously? How can you not have a TV?" Well of course I have a TV (a 42" LCD, to be exact), but I don't get television. No cable, satellite or rabbit ears. My LCD is hooked up to a home theater PC. And my TV content comes from various sources, including bittorrent, usenet, and increasingly from a website called Hulu . You name it, Hulu has got it. My favorite TV shows are mostly available on-demand, with minimal enough commercial interruption as to still be watchable. I said mostly. ABC doesn't seem to want to join the party. If you want to watch Lost or Pushing Daisies (the only good shows on ABC), you'll find a Hulu link pointing to ABC's own site. And while Hulu shows are watcheable on all versions of Windows, Mac and Linux computers, ABC's TV viewer ONLY works on Windows XP or Vista PC's. What's worse is that the...

As many of you know, I am a big fan of last.fm . My fascination with the site began a couple of years ago. During my quest for new and interesting music, I stumbled upon last.fm. It billed itself as a music recommendation service, so I decided to give it a listen for a while. I was not initially impressed. It played some random but bearable music based on an artist I suggested (Prince, I think), but then quickly lapsed into heavy metal and then country, after which I promptly turned it off. Days later, I read that there were two ways for the audio scrobbler that powers last.fm to recommend music that I would like. Either I could listen to it's recommendations based on an artist, giving each song I heard a thumbs up or down, or I could let the scrobbler "listen" to my music collection. Basically, if I wanted to speed things up, I needed to play *my* music in my audio player of choice, along with a plugin that would feed that information to last.fm. After last.fm ...

So there I was, standing at the very center of the Obama celebratory hurricane at a club called Sugar Hill in Atlanta's Underground. A couple of friends and I were crowded around a table, drinking cold light beer, talking about the electoral math, and watching Wolf Blitzer on a 300ft projection screen, along with about 150 other people. As the moment approached, you could feel the electricity in the air. When CNN would break for commercial, Earth Wind and Fire would crank through the speakers around us. Everyone was talking at once, sharing their personal stories about the significance of this election with complete strangers. It was awe-inspiring and beautiful. And as I tried to live-blog the event on my Palm Centro's TEENY TINY KEYBOARD, all I could think was, "I'm going to choke the life out of that Sprint rep for not getting me my demo Blackberry!!!" Needless to say, my blog entry was limited to a few emotional phrases, tersely typed using my frickin...