When I was a kid, every two years (once for the winter Olympics and once for the summer Olympics) my grandfather would drive us to Ancient Olympia, about 30 or so minutes from where we lived, to witness the lighting of torch ceremony. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a rather huge privilege to be able to witness this so often, and to be able to visit these archeological sites with th frequency that I had.

When I moved back to the US I attempted to watch the Atlanta Olympics. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't glued to the TV. There was still something about being in Ancient Olympia tha I missed. I made an attempt to watch th Athens Olympics, but at that point the info was on the net, so why bother? Time delay, taped broadcasts seemed outmoded. At that point I missed my time Greece, so I had much more incentive to watch, but I didn't.

I've missed other Olympics too, but these Olympics just seem scammy, corporate sponsored and grimey. In this day and age, with live streaming and the internet no one likes tape recorded games. You don't want to stop using the net just because you might get spoilers. I am also taking issue with professional atheletes and the Olympics. I guess I still ascribe to that whole "amateur athlete" thing, which I guess is no longer the case and hasn't been for a while. I am sorry Olympics, but the IOC is corrupt, money, sponsorships and primetime ads have been the center of these Olympics, and quite a few that passed us by. It's no wonder we keep seeing #NBCfail on twitter and #olympicFail.

Sad to see the spirit of the Olympics dead and rotting every 2 years.

Άλλο περίεργο και αυτό!

Αυτη την εβδομάδα είχα βγει για βραδινό στην "μικρή Ιταλία" της Βοστονης με κάτι συναδέλφους από το συνέδριο. Δεν πάω πολλές φορες στην περιοχή οπότε δεν την ξέρω και πολυ καλα. Ολα τα εστιατόρια, τουλάχιστον απο yelp και απο γνώστες της περιοχής, είναι πολυ καλά, έτσι στα τυφλά πήγαμε σε ένα εστιατόριο με 10 τραπέζια. Το μενού φαινόταν καλο, είχε χώρο, και το yelp είχε καλο μέσο όρο στο σκόρ του εστιατορίου.

Εκει που καθόμαστε λοιπόν, αποφάσισα να παραγγείλω δυο πρακτικά αφού δεν ήξερα πόσο μεγάλη είναι μια μερίδα, και αφού δεν πειναγα και πολύ. Ο σερβιτόρος (που είχε ιταλική προφορά) μας ρώτησε αν θέλαμε κρασί με το γεύμα, και είπα όχι. Μετα απο το συνέδριο, αρκετα κουρασμένος, δεν είχα όρεξη για οινοπνευματώδη ποτά, οπότε του είπα όχι ευχαριστώ, μόνο νερό ήθελα. Δεν είμαι σίγουρος τι μου είπε μετά, ίσως να μην το άκουσα καλά, αλλα έχω την εντύπωση πως ο σερβιτόρος με είπε τσιγκούνη επειδή δεν ήθελα κρασι με το γεύμα μου.

Να και κάτι καινούργιο, σε λέει τσιγκούνη ο σερβιτόρος επειδη δεν θελω να παραγγείλω κάτι...καλα τα πάμε.

 

Well, that was a bit short lived! Just last week I was pondering how much longer Instapaper will be a paid app given that apps and services, among them Spool, we're available for free. Well, spool is now gone into the graveyard of Web 2.0 apps and services. The nice thing about spool was that you could save multimedia for late viewing, not just text. I hope other services jump on the multimedia time shifting bandwagon soon.

This is what I got from Spool announcing the closure of th service:

Dear Spooler,

We’re writing to inform you that Spool has shut down. Your bookmarks are attached to this email. If you’d like to import these bookmarks into your browser or another service, please visit http://blog.getspool.com/instructions/ .

Thank you for using Spool and providing feedback during our beta period. It’s been a pleasure to build Spool for you and we’ve been flattered with the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve received. However, after careful consideration, we’ve decided to pursue our vision in a new way. You’ll soon be able to read details on our blog at http://blog.getspool.com

Thank you again for your support,

The Spool Team

 

My weekend Web 2.0 cleanup yielded another service that apparently went belly up over the past six months. Mediafly still exists, but they are focusing their work on the Enterprise and not on the consumer. I wonder if they will go the way of Britekite due to this restructuring.

In any case, mediafly onair was a way to subscribe to your favorite podcasts using a web interface and then access that list on your device. Many services were supported including iOS, Android, Roku and Google TV. This, for me, solved the problem of knowing when a podcast had new episodes available without having toe check each podcast individually. Sure, you could use iTunes and sync, but at the time when I was testing this out, I did not have regular access to a computer for this function.

The nice thing about Mediafly is that it let me know when there were new shows. The bad thing was that (1) downloaded podcasts never went to the regular Music container area for iOS (so the Music app could not access these files). The files were stored in the Mediafly sandbox, so they could only be played with mediafly. This was a bit of a fail. (2) The second issue was that the headphone controls never worked for this app - so what ended up happening was that I needed to pull out my iPod everytime I needed to pause/play. If I forgot myself and tried to pause a podcast playing in Mediafly, iTunes would kick in - very annoying.

In any case, seems like mediafly just got out of that game - so...arrivederci it is then :-)