Free Things You Should Know About

Ah the internet...
If there was any cool thing about the internet that wasn't being used enough it is podcasting (and videocasting). Imagine this. You are starting at your TV looking for things to watch. If you don't have TiVo (or your favorite digital TV recorder) you're stuck watching whatever comes by. Those of us blessed by having a TiVo-thingy know that you can watch your favorite shows anytime you want to, as long as it recorded it. What could be better then that? You can skip the commericals in recorded shows, rewind, save it forever. I'll tell you whats better. But first, some history.

Before there was any mention of I's or Pod's there was Red vs. Blue (RvB). RvB was a gamers kind of show, a Spy vs. Spy using the Halo universe as its stage and (mostly) without fail, would post a new webisode up for free, on the internet, with their own money for bandwidth. With iTunes leading the charge, there are venues where you could download these shows automatically for free. Let me tell you a day in the life for me.

I wake up, walk downstairs and immediately open iTunes. It starts downloading everything thats been updating for that day of things I listen to or watch on my video iPod. Podcasts, which are like blocks of audio shows that download like what I just described, and also whole shows on video. Most of whats from the old TechTv guys are now producing some of the best on the web. Dl.tv, Diggnation, Ctrl+Alt+Chicken, Meet the Press, etc are all shows that are available for free on download. And if you can make your way from the computer to TV, will be better then TiVo will ever be. §

Abbreviated Monday

I realized I never really talked about what this blog is about, but hopefully I'll just use the slow news day to kind of introduce myself and my blog.

First off, I'd like to say what this blog isn't, then what it strives to be and eventually some info about the creator and ideas for the blog itself.

Screaming in Rockets isn't a personal blog. While it may have things about me personally that would be interesting to me only or things that I personally think should recieve more attention, the story will never be about me. As alpha as this blog is, the direction doesn't seem obvious. Hopefully though, it will seem obvious later on with (somewhat consistant) updating and some cool free features available on the web (hello Digg tools), will bring something to the web. Or in the case of the "blogosphere" just my tiny voice amongst the other opinions.

Screaming in Rockets isn't an op-ed page. I'm not going to be doing any investigative reporting, but I'm not going to just be throwing links up with no reason or no take. I admit, trying to keep things from getting too derivative or opinionated will be hard to do, and to be quite honest I guess I'm kinda not sure on this statement, time will tell I suppose what voice I take.


Now to the more positive part of the one way discussion and thats what I want to be. Kotaku and Game Politics are great examples of journalism in blog format. I read those extensively but also Luke Smith's bantering on 1up isn't terrible either. I suppose I just want to shy away from being just another ranting crazyman. Wait, I mean this guy is the lunatic. No one cares what you say. Well, actually Mark Cuban has always been entertaintaining, Calacanis is just a dick. I think what I want to be the most is as close to a webzine as a blog can get. Something visually aesthetic and informative. Something to look forward to on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

So thats what Screaming in Rockets is about (Maybe?). I'll try to keep my deadlines and give you something to look forward to. All I ask is for some feedback to know if what I'm doing is right or wrong. §

Gaming for the Masses

Something that will always impress me is gaming. Video, paper, card, computer, any kind of gaming that brings happiness to people is as interesting as the personality. From the solo experiance of a first-person shooter to the cultural immersion of a massive multiplayer game like World of Warcraft, gaming is pressing against the mainstream. The first sucessfull salvo came in the form of Brain Age, a Touch Gaming game from Nintendo on the Nintendo DS game platform that actually gets adults to play aand not feel embarassed. And maybe, just maybe they'll go "Hey I want to try out that Mario my kids loved so much..."

I doubt it. The most likely thing to happen is that it becomes a passing fancy, and discussing videogaming will go back under the tables of Starbucks once again. But there will be a day, mind you, when there will be a "multimedia device" that Nintendo comes out with that not only plays games amazing but gets online, holds your music collection and even a few videos. Shoot, might as well connect to Myspace too.

Anyway, all I'm going to say is, if I could see into my crystal ball....Nintendo is the most poised for a company to be the ulimate mobile device. §

Welcome (again)

I've always been a fan of the internet. From its inception, creating a website, hosting a few pictures, and some paragraphs about ones self, seemed to be more then enough to establish a presence on the web. Now, with server space so abundant and bandwidth costs going down, the internet is now fueling a group of amateur writers who want to share their own experiences to the world. Unfortunately this creates an unnecessary buzzing sound, somehow, in the form of text where people who are just like you and me but may have their own good ideas and observations of the world, that before would have gone unnoticed.

Like most everything on the internet, things flare up then die out as soon as they are created. But if anything is becoming more constant, it is the fact that the technology just keeps on getting better. Back when Hotmail wasn’t owned by Microsoft, the big thing to do was create crappy websites on Geocities or Angelfire. While some of them are good, and filled a certain niche, it wasn’t enough. For someone to post up some pictures they found, let alone a video, they had to conjure up some server space and then some bandwidth to be able to share to the world. Now there are startup companies who will definitely make it their mission to accommodate this digital form of self-expression.

Then Myspace happened. While this medium, in inception, isn’t terribly impressive…the ease of use and interconnectivity is where its power lies. Imagine all of those crappy Geocities pages had a friend list, incorporate a friends list, blogging like Livejournal and a virtual blank wall people can come up and scribble graffiti on…then you have a behemoth.

While I like Myspace and what it has to offer, I’ve always maintained my own space on the web of stuff I’ve found interesting, and come to realize it was a blog all along, sometimes even dated. With Flickr to replace my photo album and links to previous blog posts as websites, hopefully this site will become something more then my old website could ever hope to be, and its ease of use to contribute to it keeping fresh. §