commandN #117 (January 10th, 2008)

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headLINES
SPONSOR: GoDaddy PROMO FOR 10% OFF: COMMAND10
ABC News Facebook debates
Before the Music Dies
Soccer team gets 26,000 owners
Sony BMG to drop DRM
Embedded Slideshows
Google to Wikipedia: You're Toast

spotLIGHT
2008 Tech Predictions

webPICKS
JumpBox
Footers with great usability

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Comments

[Jes]

Vid-Error, 30 seconds to the end and no closing bumper.

AMB!! OMGOODNESS!!
You and Mikey Joseph! Miss you and precious!
But, I have to admit it was Beta that got me back. Thank you WILL. Hug my puppy! I'm reformatting the laptop and then jumping in the archives!

Congrats to Brian & Jeff on the family expansion. Jeff, twins are great. I ADORE my nieces and I can always tell them apart.

Mikey, you're not a ladies man or a stalker. You won't even tweet.

ABSOLUTELY LOVED THE PREDICTIONS!! That's a FABULOUS segment you should use in the future.

Happy New Year & G-D Bless The CN family. I love you!

[Nick C]

I like the new hair. Glad to see Mikey back.

Now throw the phone in the water!! :)

[Liam K]

Wow... longest ep ever?

Really enjoyed watching Jeff & Will deviate from the usual format and having such an in-depth predictions discussion. I hope we do see more of that kind of thing down the road (audio mixing between your voices could have been a bit more even though).

Mikey! good to see you back! I was hoping to see you provoke Amber just a little bit more though so she would hit you :D

And the most important issue of the episode: Amber's hair. I like the colour but not so much the style. Not a fan of fringes :(

[SteveintheUK]

My brain is starting to hurt trying to keep up with all of Amber's changes for 2008, running from Rogers, back with Mikey (long term?), flying to San Fran, changing both my hair colour and style, plus a super long version of commmandN, and I was worried that we would be seeing less of Amber on screen due to horrible Rogers.

Great episode, although I think that the UK football (scoccer) club is actually the second team to let fans buy shares, I'll post the name of the other team when I can remember where I bookmarked the link. Think it was around the middle of last year.

@Will n Jeff, great segment with loads of interesting points, but if you do more of these, which i hope you will, then you may want to check out the lighting that you both used,

Will, the light behind your head made your face look really pale and grey, or have you just not been outside for sometime?

Jeff, your background looked really well lit, but why to much light on your face.

I know it was the first time that you two did this for the show, so may not of actually planed on using this footage, and apart from the slight difference on sound levels and quality between you two, this style of segment worked out really well, It's also a great way to keep Will involved with the show without having to travel fro Sudbury to T.Dot every week.

@Mikey, good to see you back annoying Amber, so will we be seeing you back on commandN more often in 2008? are you still going to be doing your Digital Underground show?

@Brain, great editing this week, looked the new graphics for spotlight

@Amber, last but far from least, First, don't let Mikey bully you into throwing your iPhone into the Atlantic, he's just jealous because he hasn't got one yet. Second, love the new hair, even the fringe (Liam K), hope you stick with this colour as natural is always best. Mother Nature did know what she was doing when she made you a brunette.

Just off to install JumpBox so I can try out different designs of Wordpress themes offline, it should make working with Wordpress so much easier. Thanks

[Paul]

Thanks for those predictions guys. Well worth watching. It was interesting to see that you are having trouble getting the iPhone introduced because of outdated service Providers. Here in SE Asia we are having the opposite problem. We are waiting for the iPhone to catch up, ie. no 3G. so its not much use to us. Our biggest worry is the slow speeds that come from US sites. Rarely over 3mb. This is driving people away from the US and to other countries like Germany and Korea/Japan, for content and hosting. Its getting to the point where 40% of our online activity bypasses the US because they are too slow. The predictions about music DRM etc look like they are playing out as we speak. There was a report on BBC today that outlined the imminent collapse of EMI. Very interesting even Paul McCartney has left the Label after 45 Years.

[Paul]

My main prediction will be; with the introduction of 64 bit OS's this will be the beginning of the end for the Hard Drive. When we get the first 128 bit OS the HDD will be obselete.

[lamon]

great episode
love ambers hair
woot for mike being back
amber is going to sf, maybe a appearance on a revision3 show (tekzilla)
liked the tech predictions
i give this episode a 10/10

[Amber Mac]

Hey all!

Great comments. I wanted to let everyone know that there is a problem with the Blip.tv file right now. I am not sure if it's a length thing, but Brian is checking into it.

For now, please watch us here:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/commandn/commandN-117-h264.mov

This was a really fun ep for all of us. For future web cam chats, we'll get Will on a USB-powered headset and in front of a more interesting background. The first of those will help a lot with audio.

Big thx for Mikey for joining us. We had some good chuckles shooting (and thx to Chris for shooting and Brian for editing/posting).

As for my hair, the nice thing about hair is that it can change at any time. I'm not saying I'll go bald for our next ep, but there are options (LOL!).

Love you all...
-A

[SteveintheUK]

OK, the Football (soccer) team is the same one that was being sold last year, 'Ebbsfleet United'

From 'readwriteweb.com'
----------------
Wisdom of Crowds on the Pitch: 50,000 Fans Acquire English Football Club
Written by Josh Catone / November 13, 2007

Earlier this year (2007) MyFootballClub.co.uk was launched with the intent to gather together a crowd of football-obsessed Internet users to pool resources and buy a minor English football club. About 50,000 members paid £35 (US$72.42), creating a fund of about £1,375,000, and today the site announced that they had parlayed that cash into a deal in principle to acquire a majority stake in English minor league football club Ebbsfleet United for US$1.45 million. The site's members will have the option to buy the entire club in the future at a fixed price.
---------------
direct link - http://wapurl.co.uk/?UEH5H99

I guess that 'THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL' is just a little slow at picking up on this story.

Good find for you though Amber, but I though Ice Hockey was your game?

[SteveintheUK]

Please do NOT go bald Amber, not even 'Ladies Man Mikey' could pull that one off.

[Jeff MacArthur]

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

I think another thing we'd do in a future chat like Will and I did would be to have some "product shots" and other content to break up the discussion a bit.

In terms of the lighting on my end - I hear you about the washed out face. Unfortunately, I could find no way to reduce this on my iSight - even with the eCamm tool installed. I tried bringing the light in the room waaaay down and it just bumped up the brightness back to where it was (making it even worse b/c of the gain).

Anyway, we'll work on it and so glad everyone liked the ep.

Talk soon,

Jeff

[Brian McKechnie]

The flash file above is now fixed. Blip did something to the first version that cut it off halfway in.

-Brian

[SteveintheUK]

@Jeff

If your using eCamm's iGlasses try turning the contrast setting down a little bit, it should take away some of the washed out look. If the over all image goes a little dark, use the brightness setting to pull it up a bit.

Question, where you sitting facing a window? The sunlight falling on your face may be throwing the settings out, as the camera seems to be setting itself for the background, hope this suggestion helps, but you have probably already tried that

PS, Please try and make sure that your sister doesn't shave her head bald. Thanks

[Nick Young]

Happy new year to all of the CommandN team.

Nice to see Mikey back. Love the new look Amber. Look forward to more clips with Will and Jeff, and Beta?

Thanks,
Nick

[Will Pate]

Party in the comments! Thanks for the feedback, as always, everyone :)

[Sven from Belgium]

Really love your brown hair Amber. Very sexy for the male viewers out there. Anyway, throw that iPhone. I'm looking forward to seeing it float. GRTZ

[No Longer Twittering - On Social Networking Rehab]

Happy New Year! Looking good, Amber...

[No Longer Twittering - On Social Networking Rehab]

BTW, nice to see the old Mikey and Amber pair again...it takes me back (pre-iPod days/Windoze 95 era)

[Mike Laz]

I had such a great time.

@ Steve
Ya I think I will have to come back. If only to get Amber's iPhone into the sea.:):)

Great show Will, Amber, Jeff and Little Brian. I miss working with you guys.

Party Hard,
Mikey

[jccalhoun]

Good to see the Laz again. I like the new hair color. Great episode!

[TerminalDigit]

If you think about it, this episode really had 2 new hosts! Mikey and Brunette-Amber (aka Bramber, as opposed to the old Blamber). :) Lookin good, both of you!

[Stephen McLaughlin]

Yes I am commenting, Mike you really sound dumb sometimes, I do like digitalunderground, this is a worthless comment and shouldn't be counted

[Phil]

Enjoy your podcasts. Have been watching since "Call for Help" with Leo. Good luck

[Lawrence Gilardi]

Mike glad your back . CommandN is a better pod cast with your comic relief. Amber your hair color may have changed and your still smoking hot. Also thought the show was awesome in the new direction your taking it with Will and your brother channeling commentary , that segment was a great add on.

Life would be so much easier if only we had the source code.
Thanks Amber and Mike for being the code every week.
Lawrence

[Vince]

Liked the departures on this episode- first Amber's hair and then the iChat between Will and Jeff. Might take a few tries to knock out the lighting and audio issues (Will, get a headset) but it was refreshing. Jeff- check out Jott.com for an example of a web app similar to what you described.

Amber, are you going to throw the iPhone or just drop it in the Atlantic?