Video Content, Web 2.0, & MST3K
It’s Saturday night, which leaves me thinking about what to post. Here’s what I wrote. Ha ha. Read on, fearless reader. (That was a Japanese blog joke…sorry. I made it up myself.)
Living in a foreign country sometimes leaves a person desperate for some English entertainment. Most of the time I dive into a book. (Speaking of which, I am currently in the middle of reading a book that Aileen lent me called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Quite good so far.) I am obviously a blog freak, and an RSS addict, but other than that, I run out of stuff to do once in a while. Don’t get me wrong, I love when this happens, because it means I am not ridiculously busy.
I am really interested in the rise of internet-based video lately. Sure, that includes already powerful sites such as YouTube (owned by Google), Google Video (also owned by Google – duh), MetaCafe, Daily Motion, Vimeo, Revver, etc. But I am pretty stoked about the future of a project called Joost. Apparently, the guys who came up with Kazaa and Skype are behind it, so they’re not beginners at launching absurdly popular internet-based networking programs. That’s cool. My brother and I used to joke about creating a cable company that offered pay per channel packages. This is a step toward realizing something similar – contents catered to the customer. Very Web 2.0. Almost Web 2.1, I’d say. (For those of you who just got lost, check this video for a creative presentation of what “Web 2.0″ means. Created by Michael Wesch originally. I really liked it.)
Some of you are still thinking…”So what? How does this do anything for me?” My answer…it may not do anything for you right now. But imagine when all of the “on demand” style viewing options become widespread and internet-based. It means that instead of downloading 24 from iTunes (which I do), I could theoretically pay a lower fee for a broadcast channel over the internet and watch it along with friends wherever they may be. (If I was weird enough to not care about the time difference.) It means that I may not have to resort to watching Mystery Science Theater 3000’s typical merrymaking take on Manos: The Hands of Fate via spliced up segments scattered on popular video sites. I could just hit select it and watch.
Until then, I’m on part 8 of 11 watching Manos: The Hands of Fate, and enjoying myself in all of its ambiguously il/legal hilarity. I’ll get back to it now. Just wondering if anyone else gets a rush thinking about the future. Or out of laughing at what happens when you lose a bet. Nice one, Hal. Heh. Whooooo. 
