newmediaMike

CBC gets new media

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I came across an article yesterday that talks about how the CBC is to release episodes of the upcoming TV-show “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” for free via BitTorrent. This makes CBC the first North-American broadcaster to embrace the popular filesharing protocol.

According to Michael Geist, high quality copies of the show will be published the day after it aired on TV, without any DRM restrictions. Michael believes this development is important as it shows the CBC continues to experiment with alternative forms of distribution, but also this may help crystallize the net neutrality issue in Canada.

Kudos to the CBC - they understand new media.
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Tags: , bittorrent, CBC, CBC TV, CBCRadio, JPod, new media, podcast, podcasting

Eat Lunch with Actress Catherine Bell

I came across this on a blog in my news reader this morning.

Eat Lunch with Actress Catherine Bell

It caught my first because I am a closet “JAG” fan. My wife says it’s because of Ms. Bell and I don’t deny it either! It also caught my eye because it is a new trend I seem to be seeing … bidding on dates to benefit charity.

I’m wondering if I should jump on the bandwagon and have an “Eat Lunch with Mike Allan” charity lunch for SickKids.

Watch YouTube Clips in high resolution or download them

Now I said high resolution NOT high definition. Normally the YouTube url looks like the one below which gives you low resolution 320×240 videos.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ABCDESimply add &fmt=6 onto the end of url
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ABCDE&fmt=6

Now you should see high resolution videos. If no change is observed, then it means the video has not been converted to the higher resolution yet. View the video in full screen mode to see the difference.

If you add &fmt=18 to the end of url.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ABCDE&fmt=18

Now it will play the high-resolution 480×360 MP4 high-bandwidth videos with higher quality audio when available, otherwise it will play the regular version. Give it a try. [Found via Quick OnlineTips]

I’m going to try and play with it and the YouTube brackets plugin I use with this theme.

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