alvear.com

Comcast’s Triple Play

Posted on June 27th, 2008 by jalvear

Years ago, I got rid of my landline because, well…who needs one?

Sure lots of people have them still, but it’s well known that telephone operators are losing revenue to mobile operators because of the popularity of cell phones. Many people have decided to drop the land lines because they are a) always on the run, b) don’t want to pay extra for a phone they don’t use and c) love their cell phones.

Well, I decided to get a phone but through my cable provider Comcast. I called them up yesterday to see if I could get a lower rate on my cable bill, and they came back with a great offer of $159/month for a triple play package–voice, data and cable. That comes with all the premium channels (Starz, HBO, Showtime, Skinemax Cinemax and more), plus unlimited local and long distance calls.

I’ve used VOIP years ago when it was kind of crappy quality, but now I’m guessing that it’s much better.

Cable operators are also under pressure to get more revenue and keep customers. Telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon are starting to offer TV (U-Verse and FiOS TV, respectively) and they already have voice and data (DSL). So telcos are now competing with cable companies. And vice versa.

Overall, it’s great for consumers. We get cheap triple or quad-play packages. And they get to keep me as a customer for another month.

At least until I get a better offer from someone else.

Anyway, I recommend calling your local broadband or TV provider and negotiate for a lower rate. Shop around, find out what kind of prices and offers are being advertised, and chances are you’ll get a much lower rate and maybe some new services or channels. Good luck!

Filed under: Broadband, VOIP | No Comments »

Internet Video and Social Change Survey

Posted on June 26th, 2008 by jalvear

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m conducting a research report on how Internet video can impact social change.

I’m inviting non-profits, independent filmmakers and other organizations interested in social change to discuss how people can widen their distribution (to DVDs, theaters, etc.) and how they can earn additional revenue.

If you’re involved in Internet video delivery or social change, I’d like to invite you to fill out this survey. Responses will be anonymous and I’ll be able to share top level results publicly.

As an incentive for participation, I am offering a $150 Kiva gift certificate to one random person. These certificates allow you to log in to Kiva.org and micro-lend money to entrepreneurs all around the world.

The survey will close on July 7th, 2008 and the winner will be contacted privately soon afterward.

Please contact me if you have any questions. Thanks!

Filed under: Administration | No Comments »

Digital Media Overload

Posted on June 26th, 2008 by jalvear

I’m suffering from digital media overload (DMO).

In the past few months, I’ve been going all digital and have encoded all of my CDs onto iTunes, and have even started recording my family’s VHS home movies onto DVD so I can keep them digitally. I have over 400 CDs, so this was a tedious task. But I’m tired of hauling around CDs and jewel cases and not having them available anywhere I want. Now, all my CDs are on my home server and my iPod.

iTunes organizes all my music and keeps track of where they are stored and makes it easy for me to access it at anytime.

But I’m having a lot of problems with pictures and videos. I like digital media; I take lots of photos and shoot video through my digital camera too. And that requires a lot of time to move files to my PC, rename files and organize them into folders. Who has the time to do this everyday? Maybe that’s why I’ve just been transferring photos into random folders on my computer–I just don’t have the time to organize everything.

Perhaps the problem is metadata. CDs have metadata built-in which makes it easy to create a music library. However, personal digital photos and movies are different. There’s no metadata. That means I have to review the photos, then rename files with something meaningful and organize them in folders. Forget about editing the photos–I definitely don’t have the time or expertise for that. Overall, that’s a lot of manual work to manage my digital media. Why isn’t there something like iTunes for my photos?

I’ve played around with Picasa, Google’s photo editing and organization software, but it’s not filling my needs. For example, it doesn’t integrate with Flickr (which is owned by Yahoo!), but with Google’s online Picasa site. That’s not good. I’ve chosen Flickr as my photo site and don’t want to change it now.

So what’s the best way to save, catalog and store digital photos and movies? How can I organize everything? By date? By tags? By event? By type of file? By location? I have no idea! Nothing makes sense to me right now.

Eventually, I want to post all my photos on Flickr, but I feel like I need to organize them on my PC first and get rid of my DMO.

So how do you organize your digital photos and home videos on your PC?

Photo courtesy of frumbert

Filed under: Digital video, Photos | No Comments »

Learning to Play Guitar via YouTube

Posted on June 25th, 2008 by jalvear

Right before I decided to get carpal tunnel release surgery for both of my hands, I decided I wanted to learn how to play a few musical instruments. I love all kinds of music and wanted to write and play my own songs. And I wanted to be a rocker and rock out.

In junior high school, I played the alto saxophone. Well, I didn’t really play that well. I mostly just blew into the instrument and figured it didn’t matter what it sounded like. I was young and kind of bored with the sax and just didn’t take it seriously.

I wish I had because I regret not taking up music much younger. After junior high, I didn’t play another instrument for many years and lost a lot of my knowledge of notes and music reading.

Nevertheless, I have now decided that I want to play multiple musical instruments. In the last few years, I’ve bought used instruments like a tiny drum kit, a violin, and a clarinet at garage and estate sales. But I didn’t take those very seriously either.

Just a few weeks ago, however, I decided to get serious about playing the guitar. I started with a used acoustic guitar, but that was hopelessly always out of tune. Then I bought a cheap electric guitar and have had lots of fun with it. Finally, I feel like a rocker!

So I haven’t taken any formal classes, I’m just playing around and teaching myself. Although I have used the intro DVD that came with my guitar, it’s only taking me so far into beginning guitar playing. So I’ve been using YouTube to learn.

The good thing about using YouTube as your teacher is that it’s video and I’m a visual person so this helps me look at notes, strumming and chord placements. Plus I can play along with the video and practice, practice, practice. The downside is that many people on YouTube are amateurs themselves in many ways and they don’t know how to be a good instructor. In other words, the quality of your guitar tutorials can vary greatly.

So what I do, is go to YouTube and type in things like “beginning guitar” or “how to play”. Now that I’ve been playing a few weeks, I also tend to search for songs that I’d like to play like “Smells Like Teen Spirit“, “Whole Lotta Love” or “Hey There Delilah”. Fortunately, many people post their instructional videos, so if one person doesn’t explain it well (or goes too fast for me), I can try someone else.

Now, I’m no expert, but these tutorial sure help me along my way. Once I learn the basic chords or notes, I’m on my way and practice on my own.

Excuse me while I go practice now!

Filed under: Guitar, YouTube | No Comments »

Internet Video and Social Change

Posted on June 24th, 2008 by jalvear

I am currently working on a research project on how Internet video can affect social change. Do you know individuals involved in distributing, producing and/or creating films or movies involving social change?

This may include companies involved in Internet video and distribution (YouTube, Brightcove), documentary filmmakers, non-profit organizations involved in Internet video, or anyone that is involved in making a difference using Internet video.

I’d like to talk to as many organizations/people as possible and send them a survey on how the Internet is being used for social change. The end product will be a private research report, however I will be able to release some top-level results to participants and the public.

If you know someone who’d like to talk about this, please contact me at jose at alvear.com.

Filed under: Administration | 2 Comments »

What’s Going On

Posted on June 23rd, 2008 by jalvear

I’ve had this blog for a very long time, but it’s going through a change again. Alvear.com will mostly be about my personal life with just a few bits on digital media and how it affects my life. My other blogs, Digital Media Bulletin and DVR Bulletin, focus on Internet video and next generation TV, respectively.

Yes, there’ll be lots of cross-posting and talk about digital media here, but I’d like to keep it a bit separate. Hopefully, I can achieve this goal.

Alvear.com will still remain the place where I post pictures from my mobile phone, however. For some weird reason, my phone the Sprint Mogul (HTC PPC-6800) cannot send picture mail. Even though I’ve signed up with Sprint for picture mail. Apparently, Sprint has decided to disable Sprint Picture Mail on this phone. Although there used to be a work around by installing a third-party application, that no longer works. It looks like Sprint has shut down that loophole for good.

Instead, Sprint said I can just go to the Sprint web site and send mail from my phone’s browser. Uh, no way. That’s too clunky and it takes for ever to log-in, upload the picture and send it out.

The better solution, I’ve found, is to integrate Flickr with this blog. All I do, is take a picture on my phone, then use my phone’s email and send it to a special email address that is created for me by Flickr. The picture is automatically posted on the blog of my choice and is added to my Flickr account at the same time. Pretty nifty, eh?

Not sure how many people know about this, but I guess not every has a blog (yet).

I’m a bit of a shutterbug (as you can tell from my Flickr site) so I like it when there’s an easy way to upload pictures to my phone site.

Anyway, thanks for reading and tuning in!

Filed under: Administration, Photos | No Comments »