Full Transcript:

Ed Kohler: Welcome to Technology Evangelist – New Media Monday. This Ed Kohler, I am here with Jeremy Elfering and Benjamin Higginbotham. Today being New Media Monday, we are going to cover today Final Cut Pro Server, Studio 2, Red Camera, Movie downloads to the UK for iTunes, what’s going on with Dodgeball these days in Google and also on Google what’s up with DoubleClick and Clear Channel, so quite a few topics today.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, what is up with that?

Ed Kohler: Well, a lot happened over the weekend…

Jeremy Elfering: Apparently, don’t these people know that they are not supposed to make announcements over the weekend.

Ed Kohler: Well, nothing happened in Minnesota weekend, it was just too nice here, but this stuff all happened elsewhere. So, I saw some Twitterign this weekend about the Final Cut Server, including from you Ben.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: Why where you a-Twitter about this?

Benjamin Higginbotham: There is long been a problem in media, in television media, New Media, all of it and that is asset management. We are a perfect example of that, we archive everything in it’s original format, we got hundreds, if not thousands of media files that go to all these projects and now I know that I have got an interview I did with Steve Wozniak, where is that? Where is the raw footage? What do I have to work with? What’s the time code? What was said in it? How do I find that again?

Jeremy Elfering: And here is the beauty part, what if I am in the middle of working with it?

Benjamin Higginbotham: There you go, so Final Cut Server does is an asset management solution, specific to video production. There have been a lot these throughout the years, Virage is one of them and there are couple of other…

Jeremy Elfering: There is a bunch more.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And they are grossly expensive.

Jeremy Elfering: They are grossly expensive and some of them kind of suck.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All of them suck, I have never seen one that I actually like. They are all, they start at $50,000 and that’s for low-end solution. They jump way up in hundreds of thousands of dollars and they are just not good and I don’t know Final Cut Server is going to be good, but when Apple entered the market with Final Cut Pro back in 1999, it was good. It beat the pants of most everything around it and I hope that with Apple’s standards of excellence, is that what I want to say?

Ed Kohler: With high pollished products?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly, I am hopping that Final Cut Server is going to be up there along those lines and this is not for everyone, it is a $1,000 for 10 seats, is that right?

Jeremy Elfering: $1,000 for 10 seats.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And then $3,000 for unlimited seats and that’s scary and saying cheap. It is unheard of inexpensive.

Ed Kohler: And what sort of trends you think of lead to, this product been able to exist, because of the competing power it is out today or did they crack some specific known type of puzzle?

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, I think it was because, it was a missing link in Final Cut Pro. The big problem with Final Cut Pro today is asset management. It is very hard for me to work on it, in Final Cut in a news room application. That’s why other companies are able to thrive in that, because Final Cut really falls down when you are trying to manage your assets, when you are trying to move files back and forth and figure out, give your producer the ability to say “I like this clip, I don’t like this clip here is an in and out point” and really share that medium among multiple users. Final Cut Pro is never been very-very good, now they started moving into that room with Xsan and Xserv and share media and running off that, but it still wasn’t as good as other solutions, such as a layered or an Avid solution. This puts them on par with those solutions, so it takes that Final Cut Pro solution that was a $1,200 package, they got you everything you needed and it really brings it up all the way into the mid-range Avid area and may be even higher so far. Up until now, it has been the low-end Avid area, not really been the really high-end stuff, but for a fraction of the price, and so what they are doing is they are just constantly pushing that price point down and making Final Cut Pro even more and more relevant in the industry and also it is going to do is increase their market share in hardware, because more and more people are going to be migrating to Final Cut Pro. Why would I use the more expensive solutions when I have got my entire turnkey package available through Apple?

Ed Kohler: When you talk about within the industry, which industry are you, over into the broadcast?

Jeremy Elfering: Very much the broadcast industry.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t know if it is just broadcast? It is not limited just to broadcast, it is indie film making it is broadcast, it is news, it is just about anything, even for…

Jeremy Elfering: Even what they showed as their test bed, it is primarily could be used as news application.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, I don’t know if it is actually suited for that as it could be. I don’t know if it has things like ENR integration which is Electronic News Room or things like that, it may, I haven’t seen it. So, with out ENR integration it is not going to be very useful in a news room, may be it does, I don’t know. I think that it's real market, whether people realize it or not, is going to be for independent producers like Technology Evangelist and Innovating Media where we need a solution and we don’t want to spend a $150,000 for asset management and we need something to take care of all this stuff and $1,000 to $2,000 easy, no brainer, it will pay for itself in a month.

Jeremy Elfering: Oh God, yes.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And I think that’s really where it is market is going to take off. Although it looks like on the surface, it looks like it is going to be powerful enough to run all the way up into high-end broadcast as well.

Jeremy Elfering: And if that is the case, you got how many different stations around the country, who are looking to upgrade their…

Benjamin Higginbotham: All of them.

Jeremy Elfering: All of them. They all want to be off Avid system, because it cost too much.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t know, it is a passionate debate.

Ed Kohler: What you think of the name of the product, when I saw the name, not knowing anything about the product, I thought it was going to be a server based version of Final Cut Pro?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, what’s interesting is in a way it is, but at the same time it isn’t. It is kind of like the linking mechanism, it is more like a back office server as it were, it links all the systems together from a proxy and asset management, because ultimately Final Cut Pro is nothing without content, right? You have to have your media files there and what this is doing is giving you back in a way to find those media files. Now, it doesn’t necessarily have to hold them, I am making some assumptions here having never used the software, a lot of asset management systems will say “here is this clip, they will have low-res proxy of the clip and say, so you have an idea of what it is and say if you want the full-ret version it is on tape X or it is on DVD ram drive whatever or it is an archive or in our case it is on Hard Drive whatever subfolder, such. So, what it is, is a server mechanism to tie all the systems back together to get those media into any Final Cut system that you want. I being from the broadcast world, when they said Final Cut Server, I didn’t think Final Cut Pro on a server, I just don’t see that as interesting or necessary, so I had an idea what they are going for. And I think ultimately, I am more their target audience then.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, sure.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I think most videographers and videofiles do understand what they mean by Final Cut Server.

Jeremy Elfering: And that’s deeper really talking to is, people who are already in the industry, who are looking for an asset management service.

Ed Kohler: With an asset management service, it seems like it's hard enough for people to remember the right on a tape, what is they shot, how does this help people who are just not taking care of archiving at that level?

Benjamin Higginbotham: It won’t.

Jeremy Elfering: It won’t.

Ed Kohler: It is a tool that, you have actually use it…

Jeremy Elfering: You know what? Most people who are working in a higher-end broadcast system are used to logging clips and stuff like that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but that brings up the argument again, against my point that it would be used in markets like ours, where have you actually renamed any of those P2 clips or they all called JQMF472.move.

Jeremy Elfering: That is the problem.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, absolutely you have go through and rename or tag every single one of them. Although once you get a system worked out in the long run it is worthy extra work upfront, because it will save you hours, behind the scenes from doing this stuff, but if you are not willing to do it upfront, you know absolutely.

Ed Kohler: Sure, so Final Cut Studio 2, what’s this all about?

Jeremy Elfering: It is latest and greatest upgrade to Final Cut.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Makes me happy.

Ed Kohler: And the changes are?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Very numerous, I am not sure that we go over all the changes in the podcast, we would be here all day long. The big ones that…

Ed Kohler: What got you excited?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, I was going to say the bigger things, the big ones that really got me going, I keep hitting my microphone, what’s going on with that, I have never done that before.

Ed Kohler: It is really exciting.

Jeremy Elfering: You are very excited, yeah.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I am, the big ones that really got me going were the new compressor. I am really hoping, the old version of their compressor, which is what takes your final project and turns into something that you can distribute either on DVD’s, on the Web, or whatnot. The old compressor was not very good, it was very limiting in what you could do, it didn’t even have, all that we do is H.264 MPEG-4 encapsulated files and you can’t do that in compressor.

Jeremy Elfering: No.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Pretty basic stuff. QuickTime can do it, why can't compressor? So it looks like a compressor is opened up a little bit more. It will do windows media files, it will do H.264, hope it will do flash files, I am really hoping that they open it up, so that any QuickTime export component that’s available to QuickTime, will be available to compressor and it looks like that might be the case, although I am not entirely sure, because I saw some of that legacy, these are your only option type things in there, so I am really excited to see what they going to have going on there, because compressor when used you can actually move it across multiple machines and so we could do some really, we could speed up our work flow substantially. The other cool things, there is a new color application because color is very important to video, it is one of those things that people never think about. Just like you don’t think about your sound track, you don’t think abut the emotion that the sound is bringing out. Color is the same thing, do you have a Blue Hue or Red Hue or Orange Hue, do you have, what happens to your skin tone, do you push your skin tone forward or pull it back and it is just one of those things that people never really think about that, stylist design thing, but it is incredibly important if you want to pull in emotion and ultimately video is always about pulling emotion and so that was really cool. The big one that I really like, because we do a lot of high-def standard-def mixing in the timeline…

Jeremy Elfering: It is beautiful, you can actually mix both format, you could mix match formats. Mix and match frame rates, formats and mix them in timeline which you can’t do before, which couldn’t do before.

Benjamin Higginbotham: You could do it, but you had to render it.

Jeremy Elfering: Yes.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Now, looks like it will play it on real time and

Jeremy Elfering: This was huge.

Benjamin Higginbotham: To bring this, so that everyone understands why we care, so we shoot everything in, I say everything, we shoot mostly everything in 1080px24 and then we will do, may be a remote interview with someone through Sight Speed, well that’s 320x240 totally different codec, 15 frames a second. So, it is a totally different format and let’s say we had both shots on the screen at the same time, so the high-def footage in one area and then the little box of the streaming video in another area…

Jeremy Elfering: And then we add in something else that’s…

Benjamin Higginbotham: May be a title, now I have got three different formats on the timeline, I can’t play that back, I can’t see what it is going to look like, I have to render the whole thing and then say OK, well that didn’t quite work, I need to move this element, as soon as I move the element, now it breaks on my renders, I have re-render everything like that I am quite right, and I keep tweaking it and keep rendering it and every time you render, you waste time and so this may not give me a full resolution output of what it is going to be, may be it will, it doesn’t today, so I don’t feel that it wouldn’t in the new version…

Jeremy Elfering: I can imagine that it would, but at least I can see it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: If you can get a rough preview, what it is going to look like, I think tweak that up and just do one render, you save so much time.

Ed Kohler: Is this a thing that say like RocketBoom might run into and like say embedding a YouTube video clip inside of a one of their videos?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Absolutely, that would because they are probably doing a screen capture with that and that screen capture is going to be different format in what their native resolution there, probably working in HDV, 1080i-60 and when they bring that YouTube video and this going to be totally different formats, so they have to render and play with it, it is a messy process right now on Final Cut Pro and other non-linear editors allow you to do this, now usually they are little more high-end and cost you lot more money, but again this is just Apple taking those high-end features and pushing it down in the market and giving it to you in $1,200 package. What you get in Final Cut Pro for the studio package for 1,200 bucks is amazing. It is absolutely amazing, I could honestly go on for hours the 3D support in motion display.

Jeremy Elfering: Now, you combine that with the New Mac Pros, it going to be phenomenal, I have to deal with…

Benjamin Higginbotham: What really excites me with New Mac Pros, the new version of compressor which is more optimized than the old version of compressor running on a Octo Core system.

Jeremy Elfering: I think from the test they showed were three times as fast.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Just on the same, just going from compressor 2 to compressor 3.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, if we can get that H.264 mepg-4 encapsulated stuff, right now in on 8 core system, running on compressor 3, not take this, now may be you get 4 Octo Core systems and you can actually spread the load across all four.

Jeremy Elfering: It will be amazing, tingling.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I am tingling over here.

Ed Kohler: Awesomeness.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: OK, so a couple of months ago we had a change to meet up with the guy that produces FrenchMaidTV and during that conversation on of the things he talked about was the Red Camera.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: So, apparently that’s been progressing.

Jeremy Elfering:Yes.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t know.

Jeremy Elfering: Well according to their website, they have a price on it and it estimated ship in early 2007, now.

Ed Kohler: Well, we are in early 2007.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Are we like getting into mid-2007.

Jeremy Elfering: We are getting there close, but you know how those estimates work.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well that’s been online, that’s not anything new, it is has been along for a while. For those who don’t know, the Red Camera is a very cool, because actually I was just drooling over this last night, Sony released they have got their new 1080p-60 cameras and it is based on HD cam, HD Cam SLR, something like that.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And what that means is you can do full 1080p at 60 frames, not fields, but frames per second in a 422 color space or 30 frames or lower and 444 color space and that camera is basically a for an independent film making or a lot like what we do here at Technology Evangelist, but we have got HVX200 and they add a lot of noise to the picture, these would be a very-very-very clean signal.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, the price reflects that there.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, I think it is a $100,000 camera before glass, which means that the $100,000 doesn’t actually get you usable system, that’s just gives you the base of the unit, which is very common in high-end cameras, it is in fact the way they all do it and then you got to buy a glass, which is going to be another $20,000, $40,000 depending up on the glass you get.

Jeremy Elfering: $20,000 is minimum for an HD Camera.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Right and you can get that glass up to, when I say glass that’s a lens, you can get that up to another $100,000. This could be potentially $200,000 camera and it is really cool. I mean it does really great things. What the Red Camera is, this is a $20,000 camera and they make their own lenses, but you can use standard 35 millimeter lenses, if you want, but if you want to buy one of their lenses, those start about $5,000 and they have got a higher-end model $10,000, so you can get an entire not 1080p system, but what’s called 4K system, which is, we call that it is approximately four times resolution of 1080p for, it will cost $50,000, turnkey end-to-end. I am making that number up because it is not actually shipping.

Jeremy Elfering: We are guessing on this, but…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Making a few assumptions, but that’s what so amazing about the Red Camera. Although, it is been announced for, they told us about it two years ago or three years ago?

Jeremy Elfering: I think two years ago and it won an award last year, at NAB.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, it is not shipping.

Jeremy Elfering: But, it is not shipping yet.

Benjamin Higginbotham: It is still vapor ware and some people say…

Ed Kohler: Most coolest potential…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Most vapory product.

Jeremy Elfering: This is one thing that encouraging is that Apple announced support for this camera.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah and I don’t think Apple would have announced support for the camera, unless there were something real there.

Jeremy Elfering: Exactly.

Benjamin Higginbotham: They actually built it in the Final Cut Pro 6, it looks like it is got full native Red camera support right in there and they have also got the ability to work with these files, the 4K files on Mac Book Pro, so I do have to assume that’s unlimited fashion and I am just excited for this camera because, now I can get that really high-end Sony 1080p-60 type system for 50 grand, for the price of one of those Sony cameras I can get four of these Red Cameras if they ever actually ship them and it could potentially change the market place, because you look at podcasters like us who, any noise in the signal will degrade the quality of the compression substantially, even just a little bit of noise in black; well the codec has to compress that and the cleaner we can get the picture, the better it is going to look online, that’s why I am whole heartedly against interlaced cameras, because that is artifacting in the picture and your codec has to deal with that and it drives your bit rate up. The cleaner we can get the input image, the cleaner we can source and acquire the image the lower the bit rates and higher the quality, we can get these final files, MacBreak is a great example of that. They can distribute 1080p video at about half the bit rate that we can distribute at, but they are also using those really high-end cameras and they have a lot less noise in the picture, so they are able to do a lot more, with a lot less, but it cost lot more to do it.

Jeremy Elfering: Exactly.

Benjamin Higginbotham: This camera will allow us to do what MacBreak is doing for a fraction of the price, assuming it ever shipped.

Jeremy Elfering: Assuming ever shipped, that’s the thing.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And if it does ship, been able to maintain quantity of the product, because if it actually is everything it claims to be. It may not be, if it is everything it claims to be then, it is just going to obliterate the very cam from Panasonic, it is going to obliterate say all the cameras from Sony, it is going to completely and totally change the video in market place and they are going to I think they will rule the world actually.

Jeremy Elfering: They could, at least the broadcastworld.

Benjamin Higginbotham: If you can’t tell I am really excited about the Red Camera and I am trying, I am desperately trying to believe that it is a real product that will actually come out with out any problems.

Jeremy Elfering: I think that’s what the hope from a lot of people is, if it does come out and it doesn’t have any major flaws.

Ed Kohler: Well, if Red is looking for anyone to test that camera.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I would love to, I would love to get my hands on one, see what it can actually do and put it out in the field with people like us who are not film guys, we are video guys and see how it actually feels in our hands and if it feels like this camera might be a little bit more film oriented, especially since it's doing 2K-4K type stuff. So, we would have to, your depth of field in video versus film is totally different, your widing scenarios for video versus film are totally different. Audio is essentially the same, but it depends on how you want to make it all go doing a pre or post, but understanding how the camera is going to work in a podcasting scenario, we are going to call this a high-end videocast, because $50,000 for a high-end camera is not a lot in broadcast video will spend a lot more than that on a camera and I think the high-high-high-end podcasters, videocasters would be willming to drop that much money on a camera like that.

Jeremy Elfering: I think they would…

Ed Kohler: If they try making living on this things.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Absolutely and the beautiful thing is you have room to grow.

Jeremy Elfering: Exactly.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Because right now, the Internet video is really 720p, because of the Apple TV and this camera can do 720p that’s basically the lowest resolution this thing does. Awesome.

Jeremy Elfering: Yes.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, the Internet video 720p today, but then when it moves to 1080p, which it will, you have already got a camera that does that and if it moves to 2K, you have already got a camera that does that, if it moves to 4K or if you shoot everything in 4K and decide later, I want to release a film, a feature film on this?

Jeremy Elfering: You can do it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: It is already acquired in 4K, you can do whatever you want with the content, it is full film resolution. Wow, I think I spit…

Jeremy Elfering: You might have.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I will get off my soap box.

Ed Kohler: Well, I just found out that one thing you can’t do on Red's site today is you can order stickers.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Oh, Really? I should order some, and stick it on my car? How much are they, are they free?

Ed Kohler: They start with 5 bucks, but they have some that are massive, for back of your car, big circle like this.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I need one of those.

Ed Kohler: And has a buzz saw around the edges, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: For those who don’t know, the guy who started Oakley, right? What is his name?

Ed Kohler: I don’t know.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, he is the one who started the Red stuff and it is Oakley’s optic engineers who are making the Red Lenses, so I am not sure if that’s good or bad, but I always look like a dweeb when I'm wearing Oakley glasses.  But the lenses are really clear.

Jeremy Elfering: Ben, I hate to say this…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah…

Ed Kohler: There is a cool factor with Oakley, so, I am sure their branding will be very good on this as well. Even if it doesn’t work, the branding will be great.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s my concern, right? That’s deadly, if you do branding on a product and you don’t have a decent product, you are just going to shoot yourself in the foot. Branding is a very dangerous game to be in.

Ed Kohler: Well, last week we talked about iTunes and how the ammount of inventory that’s available MGM, it is now going to be available int he US, But Jeremy, what's this about the UK scene? What did you read about?

Jeremy Elfering: Well, right now the UK is not able to download movies from iTunes.

Ed Kohler: Any movies?

Jeremy Elfering: Nothing, some what limited.

Ed Kohler: There is some what limited, but they are able to get Apple TV’s interestingly enough, so it is you got to expect that Apple is going to figure out someway to get them content, because they are screaming for it and they more pay for it.

Ed Kohler: Sound like a great market for the Technology Evangelist 720p.

Jeremy Elfering: Yes, right now. We are the only content you can get in the UK and that’s not true, but…

Ed Kohler: You will learn to love it.

Jeremy Elfering: For right now, we will say that’s true, so it is one of those rumors it is coming out that Apple is got to do something, because UK is an area that likes downloads and is willing to pay for it, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but they are battling DRM over in the UK, aren’t they?

Jeremy Elfering: They are battling DRM, but that got to be away that they can find a way to do it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, remove DRM, why do you think they did the EMI deal?

Ed Kohler: Yes, just a matter of time, so…

Jeremy Elfering: It is just a matter of time and it will be a good source of income for Apple.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but how much time, I mean if it really is a DRM deal and they required to remove the DRM, the movie studios are not going to like that too much. Heck the audio guys, don’t like that too much.

Ed Kohler: Well, I think one thing that you need to think about is, how long do you want let people train themselves on how to steal movies, if you can’t buy them through iTunes, people are still going to get them online, so everyone is going to become a professional thief and then you introduce a paid version, I don’t think it is going to work that well.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s my point, very good point.

Jeremy Elfering: Well, we have already proven, studies have already shown that the UK audience is ready to pay for it, so find a way to get them their content and they will pay for it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: As long as it is a fair price.

Jeremy Elfering: As long as it is a fair price, yes.

Benjamin Higginbotham: If you are over…

Jeremy Elfering: If you overcharge, then they won’t do it, but if it is a fair price they will pay for it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I just spent, I think like $200 on all five seasons of Babylon5 in iTunes music store.

Jeremy Elfering: Did you?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah. Dawn of the third age of Mankind...

Jeremy Elfering: I don’t want to talk about where I just got my all five seasons of Babylon5...

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, my point is clearly that people will pay, because I have the option of just using a torrent site, because I am well versed in how to do that, but I still chose to actually pay and get that, so I mean it is on the top level threshold of what I am going to do, but absolute.

Jeremy Elfering: But, you are going to pay for it?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: What do you think this falls as far as tech ethics go?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Tethics?

Ed Kohler: Tethics, I guess you could call it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Let’s coin that term TETHICS.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, Machael Erranger was talking at the Video on the Net conference about, there were some show that, I think it is Heroes, I am not positive about what show it was, where it was an HBO show, but he subscribes HBO, but he still prefers to get it through torrent, just because then it's on his computer, so when he is traveling on a plane that’s often when one is going to watch the show, so he feels like his conscience is clear, because he is subscribing to the content.

Jeremy Elfering: He is paying for it already?

Ed Kohler: Right, he just chooses to get it additionally, by going to Private Bay and finding the content, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: See from an ethics, I don’t know what the law says on that, but just purely from an ethic standpoint, I think that’s fine, he is paying for the content, he just wants it ingested in another way and so what?

Jeremy Elfering: It is not that he's using it that way all the time, it is just that he needs a it what way for traveling.

Ed Kohler: Where even if he did all the time, subscribing to it all the time, now I have run into the same situation with getting a copy of Grey's Anatomy, I bought it online through iTunes for my wife and when she actually went to watch it, the quality pretty much sucked, so then we went in just pull it down of the web instead, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Irony…

Ed Kohler: Yeah, it is the quality of stealing is better than the quality of paying today, which is another thing that they absolutely have to fix that.

Jeremy Elfering: Absolutely and I think Apple TV will help that, at least with the iTunes side of stuff, because they now have a way to present it in 720p.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but they don’t have any, what was preventing them from doing it before, your computer can do way higher than 720..

Jeremy Elfering: I agree, for the most part they are performing for the iPod.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, I also questioned the video quality of the Apple TV in 720p mode, because I watch our content on a computer monitor and then I watch it on an High Definition monitor or the Apple TV and the Apple TV is not doing, it is not holding up very well, frankly, I don’t think. I am working on testing that and actually verifying that’s actually true and not just some stupid setting on the television, which it could be, but I think there are some issues with the decode on that.

Jeremy Elfering: It could be.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, that goes back to may be Apple doesn’t want to do that?

Ed Kohler: Well, keep us up-to-date on that?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yes.

Ed Kohler: Moving on, what’s up with the news last night that came out about Dodgeball. the founders of the Dodgeball left Google now, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Twitter beat them.

Jeremy Elfering: Twitter beat them.

Ed Kohler: Well, Dodgeball floundered …

Jeremy Elfering: Dodgeball floundered because they weren’t developing anything.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, I remember writing about Dodgeball, about a year and half ago, I think on Technology Evangelist and I thought they had great potential because they building this strong network, they will help through SMS, you have the restaurant tie ins, I mean the advertising opportunity just seemed enormous.

Jeremy Elfering: Yeah, but nothing happened.

Ed Kohler: Right and in the same vein, they launched mobile side at one point, but…

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, they missed on the mobile side too. They really just didn’t look or listen this to what the actual application should be and the mobile side silly things like I want to add a venue on the mobile site, which is one of the most common things I did on Dodgeball, couldn’t do it. It was basically, I can find a venue and check in from a venue and see where my friends are, what about the top 10 list, I want to see that on the mobile site, “oh, no, can’t do that”, so good is this thing and then you just have something like Twitter pop around where there are like OK, well you can do whatever you want to do, we are not going to limit you just to checking in and using this silly codes, you just 40404 and whatever you want to say, so you could use it like Dodgeball, or you could use it as a microblogging platform. It was much more open and Dodgeball never kept up, they just didn’t seem to care.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, I have friends who definitely used Dodgeball more as a Twittering type service for a quite a while, they are really big fans of the shout out feature of Dodgeball more than just checking in from any particular location.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That would be me.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, and then also I have friends who just don’t go out that often.

Benjamin Higginbotham: That would be me.

Ed Kohler: But, just want to be tied into the network and have some value…

Jeremy Elfering: That would be me, actually.

Ed Kohler: So, then you are kind of only receiving Dodgeball and not actually contributing anything, so Twitter on the other hand solves both of those problems, so I could see where that would be useful, but it is too bad because Dodgeball, there was a lot could be done with that, I mean not that were eulogizing it today necessarily, but…

Jeremy Elfering: It is pretty close though.

Ed Kohler: I don’t how it is go from where is that or, if there is a…

Jeremy Elfering: Well, especially if what the founders who left Google say it is true that Google doesn’t want to put any money into it.

Ed Kohler: Could be or may be they have plans to take entirely different direction, we really don’t know the story there.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Like Twitter.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, it could be. So, I don’t know. Well, we are about 30 minutes now, so I am just call it a day with this here, but thank you to those of you who joined on through UStream or through TalkShoe and I really appreciate that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, I love the feedback on UStream as well, because first time we have done this, we did a live on the technologyevangelist.com home page, we will probably do that through out rest of week. So, if you are listening to this podcast after the fact, you like to see kind of what our podcasting facility looks like and see us record this live, just go to technologyevangelist.com at about 11 o’clock in the morning central time, it is 12:00 – Eastern, 9:00 - Pacific and check it out.