How FriendFeed Fails

I was prais­ing Friend­Feed a short month ago in these very pages, but I’ve come to real­ize that what Friend­Feed will nev­er replace Twit­ter and its ilk as long as it remains a most­ly pas­sive inter­face. Sure, it’s a great way to keep track of what’s hap­pen­ing with your friends as they use social media, but most of them don’t reg­u­lar­ly vis­it Friend­Feed to keep track of the con­ver­sa­tions that start there. Unless Friend­Feed can reverse the infos­tream and become a con­tent source, it’s des­tined to remain a repos­i­to­ry for the flot­sam and jet­sam of the infostream.

Marathon Training Report

If you’ve talked to me late­ly, you prob­a­bly know I’m train­ing for the Philadel­phia Marathon on Novem­ber 23. When I start­ed train­ing six weeks ago, I had no idea how good I’d feel now. I ran 10 miles today. Next week I’m run­ning 11. I’m break­ing per­son­al records each week! It’s been a great expe­ri­ence and I’m doc­u­ment­ing it (for the most part) over on my Pos­ter­ous blog, Marathon Man.

This is a far cry from my days in the Philebri­ty Fit Club com­pe­ti­tion. I’m not sweat­ing weight each week. I’m con­cen­trat­ing on run­ning dis­tance com­fort­ably and con­di­tion­ing myself over the next 17 weeks. The weight will come off as the mileage increas­es to as much as 50 miles a week! It sounds like a lot now, but so did 10 before I ran it today.

As an aside, if any­one fitness/lifestyle com­pa­ny can pro­duce a pedometer/watch bet­ter than Nike Sport­band, please do. Today’s run along the Wis­sahick­on had mile­mark­ers and when I fin­ished, my Nike Sport­band was near­ly a full mile off over the course of ten miles. Did I men­tion that con­den­sa­tion is col­lect­ing in the face of the watch? It’s time for Nike to admit that they rushed this prod­uct to mar­ket and issue a recall. I’m already envi­sion­ing the unbe­liev­able class action suit that will be brought by a ton of pissed off run­ners who thought they’d found the answer to their prayers.

Video: Netflix on the Xbox 360 demoed

This has to be some of the most excit­ing news for Xbox 360 film geeks like me. As I men­tioned when it was first announced, Net­flix will make its “Watch Instant­ly” con­tent avail­able via Xbox Live, a move that beats Sony in the so-called bat­tle for the liv­ing room yet again. As the video demon­strates, it’ll be sim­ple and quick to select and watch movies, which trans­lates into less down time between rentals and it means that more women like my wife Helen will con­sid­er the Xbox game plat­form more than some­thing that’s just for the boys.
Watch the video to see how it works.

Netflix on Xbox 360

I can’t express how excit­ed I am about the news that Net­flix’s “Watch Now” con­tent will be avail­able via Xbox Live. This is a tremen­dous step toward treat­ing Xbox 360 as a mul­ti­me­dia plat­form, a play Sony made with the PS3 and failed. Microsoft made a deci­sive move to broad­en the appeal of the Xbox 360 beyond gamers and Net­flix found a way to wean them­selves off of the DVDs by mail ser­vice that rev­o­lu­tion­ized the video rental indus­try. It’s an amaz­ing win for both companies.

As I look over my decid­ed­ly nerdy queue (I have La Guerre Est Finie), I see that most of the titles that inter­est me will be avail­able when the Net­flix con­tent goes live on Xbox Live. If any­thing, I may actu­al­ly save mon­ey by par­ing back my Net­flix sub­scrip­tion and rely more on their unlim­it­ed video on-demand library. Net­flix will undoubt­ed­ly work with Microsoft to influ­ence the avail­abil­i­ty of new titles as the release win­dows shrink between the­atri­cal and DVD release date. In short, it’s going to be a great fall and winter.

Music Myths in the Internet Age

Hype­bot post­ed “5 Lies Indie Musi­cians Tell Them­selves” today. Each of these would’ve been great to dis­cuss on Sat­ur­day’s “Music 2.0” pan­el. They’re great con­ver­sa­tion starters about how the Inter­net has­n’t real­ly changed much for inde­pen­dent artists despite rumors to the contrary.

I absolute­ly agree that the Music 2.0 pan­el sand­wiched diverse top­ics togeth­er that did­n’t real­ly jibe. I felt like Kristin Thom­son from the Future of Music Coali­tion did a great job of mod­er­at­ing, but in a brief con­ver­sa­tion after the pan­el, admit­ted that she want­ed to focus on how new mod­els can help artists get their due. That more or less guar­an­teed that we as a pan­el would be view­ing the indus­try through rose-col­ored glass­es, some­thing I’d des­per­ate­ly hoped to avoid, sole­ly because it seems disin­gen­u­ous to do otherwise.