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Marc Holmes

The Unauthorised Autobiography of Marc Holmes

Microsoftie thinking about dialogue with developers. Brit in Seattle. Windswept and Interesting.


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Filed under: media

Not watching the telly

Having just bagged a house means deciding on installing cable TV and all that. Or not. The ‘triple play’ offers (that’s TV, Internet and Phone) in the US are fairly expensive ($100 per month), TV is so lousy (advertising crapola mainly), and who needs a landline anyway, that I’ve decided to eschew all that stuff and buy a Roku box. (I’ll probably get the Media Center working when the “boat with all our stuff on” turns up in Seattle).

So, I can pay for Netflix and Hulu Plus on a monthly basis, and then Amazon Instant as I need it (amongst a bunch of other stuff) and move into an on-demand, content-rather-than-channel world. When I can’t fully see the new world, I often think about my daughter’s view of it: her life of touch interfaces and only on-demand content is her basic expectation (as a 3 year old). She just doesn’t understand that some screens don’t respond well to her slapping and swiping them, and that Waybuloo “just isn’t on at the moment”. 

Generally speaking, it means I’m not watching half as much rubbish as I normally would, which is A Good Thing, as this infographic from Dataviz demonstrates:

Media_httpwwwclickerc_stsar

Is the The Great Paywall of Murdoch evil? From @realdmitchell

Excellent piece in The Observer from David Mitchell this weekend reflecting on the introduction of The Great Paywall of Murdoch for The Times and on the sometimes pious reactions of rivals including the one he writes for, which is nice and open of them.

Skipping past the pasting of Murdoch then there is a good discussion touching on the Pro-Am issues of journalism and blogging, a little on the challenges of “Free”: which sort of boils down to “embrace and possibly die” and “reject and possibly die too”, and a question on the perception of value. (All of this has happened before of course).

He also calls out those that hide behind “open” as a way of saying “I don’t want to pay for stuff and I shouldn’t have to”.

Read it. I’ll say no more because: “
While some of the stuff written for free on the internet is brilliant, a lot of it – probably most of it – is shit”.
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