Archive for February, 2008
I don’t want to ride the wave like others crying out load and saying this is the worst day in my life, but it is sad, it is sad because Stage6 in my opinion was the only REAL logical future pathway towards high quality videos online, REAL high quality, I know there are other web services now that do provide this service, but again in my opinion it is not with the same ease like Stage6 because stage6 uses a format we all knew for a long time which is DivX.
Now they are claiming that they tried to convert it to a private company or to sell it but those plans couldn’t be implemented:
So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that.
Now, why didn’t we think of that before we decided to create Stage6 in the first place, you may ask? That’s a good question. When we first created Stage6, there was a clear need for a service that would offer a true high quality video experience online because other video destinations on the Internet simply weren’t providing that to users. A gap existed, and Stage6 arrived to fill it.
In simple words, the costs are just too much to handle, especially when other services are there providing high quality video streaming. I guess the people who got screwed the most are those sites which were built totally depending on Stage6 videos embedded on their pages, those are going to face big problems and they will need to switch to other services. The funny/sad/crazy thing is that Stage6 is giving only 3 day notice to access the videos on the site!!
Most people are moving now towards Google Video and Veoh, I think Youtube have already announced that they are going to launch a new service for high quality videos, I guess people might jump to that also. But again the kind of ease and quality that Stage6 has I still cant see it anywhere else, who knows maybe a new service might come up and cleverly fill this gap which will be created by the shutdown of Stage6.
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February 26th, 2008
Again and again, they keep repeating the same thing, acting as if it was a mistake, acting as if they did not mean it, acting as if it was just an error. Please, stop this nonsense, I can expect this level of stupidity from republican airheads and their friends in FAKE (FOX) NEWS and their dumb radio talkheads. But to see even Chris Mathews go through this too is just shocking.
Now, he did apologize, but so did all those who did this “mistake”. Basically what happened is that while Chris was promoting the show’s lineup, which included discussion of Barack Obama’s plagiarism of Deval Patrick’s speeches, a photo of Osama bin Laden was shown during the mention of Obama’s story.
As can be seen in this video…
And then later he apologized…..
Now I know some will say he is not to be blamed, it might have not been his fault, maybe it was a set up, maybe it was a real mistake. Well I just wish it was but I believe it was not a mistake or slip-up.
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February 20th, 2008
I think by now everybody knows how much I just love watching this show, I wish it is a daily show such as “Alqahira Alyaum” and “Al3ashera Masa2an”. Hamdi Qandeel is just genius, he makes it seem so simple, he says what each one in this Arab world wants to say, its like he collects the thoughts of all the people in the Arab world and put them in an hour episode.
Before having this blog I used to have an active channel on youtube, having hundreds of videos from “AlQahira Alayaum”, “Al3ashera Masa2an”, “Qalam Rasas” and other shows, I used to get a lot of requests from Arabs who live abroad from all nationalities to upload some parts of the show. I used to upload as much as I can but it was time consuming, anyway I will try to upload the FULL episode of “Qalam Rasas” weekly on Google Video.
In this week’s episode the most strange thing is the interview Hamdi Qandeel had over the satellite from Amman with “Hayat Elhowaik” and from Cairo with “Hussain Ahmad Amin” from the American University. It was about the new rules the Arab governments trying to start to lower the freedom level in the private Arabic channels, especially the political shows, the discussion showed the real meaning of those new rules when we see one of the makers of those rules not having any manners in the way he is discussing the matter. As usually a very interesting episode by Hamdi Qandeel. Enjoy!
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February 20th, 2008
After seasons and seasons of exclusively airing the UEFA Champions League, ART now loses those rights to Aljazeera Sport Channel. Aljazeera won those rights and for the UEFA cup for at least the next three seasons from 2009 to 2012. Aljazeera also got the rights to broadcast the UEFA Super Cups for 2009, 2010 and 2011.
What is really interesting also is that Aljazeera also got the rights to exploit those competitions on the Internet and Mobiles. It is said that Aljazeera will be selling some of he matches to free-to-air channels, those matches are expected to be in the UEFA Cup and not the UEFA Champions League.
At start there has been a few doubts on how Aljazeera Sports Channel will be able to manage to air big number of matches that play at the same time, as we know Aljazeera has now only two free-to-air channels and two “pay TV” channels, with an additional one to start soon, so to clear those doubts Aljazeera announced that they will be adding new channels that works only on matches times.
In my opinion Aljazeera Sports is better than ART, they respect the championships they have rights to, they create appropriate analysis studios they employ capable analysts and presenters. Simply speaking they are well organized, and willing to go all the way to produce high quality coverage.
In regard to ART Sports future it seems they are doomed, although some rumors say that they will be having the Italian League in FULL starting from next season, if there is any true to this it could save them but I really wish they don’t get it in full, Aljazeera is better capable to give this league the kind of attention it deserves. I really wish this Mary go around thing with the leagues ends, I wish one capable network takes all of them so we can just subscribe to one network.
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February 20th, 2008
InstantStorm is a freeware that allows you to create screensavers from flash movies, with the project wizard its as simple as one, two, three.
InstantStorm has many features and options, it allows you to create an installer for the screensaver where you can have a password and your own custom installer image and text. You will be able to create shortcuts for your desktop and start menu, and if your flash movie requires external files InstantForm will include them in the installer.
[Via Brown Thoughts]
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February 13th, 2008
Stumbleupon is a very cool way to discover the net, you simply choose what kind of websites you would like to stumble upon, and then with a simple click you stumble from one website to another, recommended by people like you. Stumbleupon will better know your taste when you give those websites a thumbs up or down, you can even write a comment about the website.
One tiny problem with stumbleupon is that you have to download a toolbar so you will be able to do all these things, now here comes the disadvantage is that the toolbar can be installed on IE and Firefox only, so those who use Opera or Safari wont be able to use stumbleupon. Although a while ago Opera did have a WIDGET for stumbleupon but for a while now it is not available.
Anyway, now Stumbleupon is testing a new way for stumbling without the use of the toolbar, you can stumbleupon websites using any browser. Just go to http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/#url= and you will see a virtual Stumbleupon toolbar which has all the options and features of the regular toolbar. All what you can do for now is hit stumble to go to a random website, you can’t use your stumbleupon account and you cant vote for any website since this is still in demo phase. Happy stumbling.
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February 13th, 2008
The night started very well for Obama, by winning Georgia and Illinois, but Clinton is doing better now, by especially winning Tennessee where Obama was expected to do well, and winning Massachusetts where Ted Kennedy endorsement of Obama did not help him much, maybe he even hurt him, so she won over Obama and Ted Kennedy.
In my opinion its looking like Clinton is going to be the nominee, maybe not today, but maybe by March or a bit later than that. But if Obama was able to score some more critical states, who know what could happen, again this election is all about delegates, and by now before counting in the wins of Clinton in Newyork and New Jersey, he is getting more delegates. Ofcourse winning Newyork would have been a great thing but i believe Mr. Obama himself knew he wont be able to do that, but Massachusetts I think they thought they had it in the bag.
Here are the results till now:
Obama: AL, DE, IL, GA, KS - Clinton: NY, TN, AR, OK, NJ, MA
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February 6th, 2008
