In the US, interesting developments in free online TV and movies have evolved over the last couple of years, from Joost to Hulu. Even YouTube is talking about streaming movies in the near future.

Unfortunately geo-blocking is preventing us from accessing much of this content in Canada, but the business model for content delivery will change here too, quickly.

Here’s an interesting podcast on why and how this will all come to pass.

Article link: Legal and Free: TV Shows and Movies on the Net

Podcast link: Listen

(via Bill St-Arnaud)

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The new aspect ratio can be used in embedded video as well. By changing the width and height parameters in the embed code in the example below I was able to use the full width available to me in this blog column. This example is 500 x 300 pixels. (I’m also forcing high quality video playback)

[pimp for BCScene]

The conversation was frank and informative and it was nice to reconnect with the likes of Julien and Charles who I haven’t seen in a while.

After much conceptual talk in the morning session about context and content and connections, Hugh McGuire did a great job “rebooting” our conversation when he led off the afternoon with a poignant reminder of why, I think, most of us in the room choose to spend the entirety of a Sunday in November sitting on the floor — lovely as the plush red carpet was — talking about podcasting.

Hugh played a clip from well-known Canadian podcaster Scarborough Dude which very effectively reminded us it’s about the audio; that audio, whether it’s online, on the radio, or on a portable device … that audio has a way of communicating to us, of engaging us, of captivating us in a way that the written word or visual media simply cannot.

Chalk it up to the primacy of language, the power of the spoken word, or the theatre of the mind, the fact remains, audio is the most powerful form of communication we have.

And our love of audio is why we choose to spend 6 hours numbing our butts at the NAC yesterday.

Here’s the intro video from Google:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=y3z7Tw1K17A&fmt=18

Have you tried it? Drop a comment.

‘Problem was, you couldn’t easily share the better quality video using YouTube’s handy link or embed code offered up just to the right of the video player window. Those links defaulted to the lower rez offerings so it was impossible to email a link that would go straight to the higher resolution video, or even to embed the higher rez video into a web page or blog.

Turns out you can work around the low rez issue with these straight forward hacks.

To link to high quality videos append &fmt=18 to the end of the URL, like this:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=RM7WfEudu5E&fmt=18

To embed high quality video, add &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 to the end of the two URLs in the embed code, like in this example

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/J11guhn6qT4&hl=en&fs=1 &ap=%2526fmt%3D18"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/J11guhn6qT4&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

To save a high quality YouTube video use the KeepVid bookmarklet.

[Via High quality YouTube video hack at Kottke.org]

I don’t know how Obama’s presidency is going to go, and I don’t hold my breath for any miracles. Any president of the USA has one hell of a challenge on his (or her) hands, and the O-man has inherited a bigger mess than anyone can clean up.

But, man if he wanted to make me happy, he could not have started in a place nearer to my heart than his Tech/Science platform, released today.

[read article] and listen to podcast