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<olb> American; 35; based near Boston, Massachusetts; developer: SUMO; developer: PyBlosxom; developer: MediaGoblin; developer: Miro; developer: Miro Community; curator: Python Miro Community; employed: Mozilla; working on second children's book; mostly decent guy; busy. </olb>

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Will's blog

purpose: Will Kahn-Greene's blog of Miro, PyBlosxom, Python, GNU/Linux, random content, PyBlosxom, Miro, and other projects mixed in there ad hoc, half-baked, and with a twist of lemon

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Thu, 15 Nov 2007

"there's no good content" == utter hogwash

One of the things I keep reading in comments of various Miro-related reviews is something along the lines of "there's no good content". I think that's utter bunk. There's a lot of good content listed in the Miro Guide. The channel starter packs that we added to the first page when you start up Miro 1.0 make this painfully clear. This doesn't even include all the content that's not even listed in the Miro Guide.

I don't have cable tv anymore because it doesn't make sense to waste my money on it.

I also don't watch a ton of shows with Miro. However, here's the list of shows I do watch (some of them while testing):

Ask a Ninja (Add to Miro) - Occasionally there's an annoying show, but mostly I think it's pretty funny. I saw the Recipe For Disaster episode just before a family reunion--couldn't have had better timing. I first discovered Ask a Ninja when one of the NPR programs I listen to periodically (I forget which one it was) had their movie critic off for the week and they played the audio from the Ask a Ninja episode reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. (Disclaimer: I have ninjas on my business card.)
Make Zing :: Blog MAKE Podcast (Add to Miro) - I love this channel. The projects are really interesting and it covers a very wide variety of topics. Dean, my brother and I met Bre at PodCamp Boston 2 and my brother secretly thinks that the t-shirt cannon project was influenced by his story of kids launching potatoes at a river from a cannon in their chimney (long story--very odd).
Galacticast (Add to Miro) - I met Casey at PodCamp Boston 2 and after hearing about Galacticast decided to look it up. It's a great show!
What you ought to know (Add to Miro) - The shows are almost all under 3 minutes long and they cover a variety of topics. It's thoroughly educational in tiny bite-sized chunks.
Wired Science | PBS (Add to Miro) - This is a great general science channel.
WebbAlert (Add to Miro) - Morgan Webb and her crew do a really good job of distilling "tech news" down to a 5 to 6 minute program Monday through Thursday. I find watching this saves me the trouble of flipping through the series of blogs I used to flip through.
Google Tech Talks (Add to Miro) - Some of the Google Tech Talks aren't wildly interesting to me, but I've learned a lot from the ones I have watched. This channel is based on a Google Video search and so you're going to want to set the Auto-download to OFF. Otherwise it's likely you'll pick up old videos you've already seen.
Onion News Network (Add to Miro) - I usually test with ONN because it's fantastic. The "Ninja parade slips through town unnoticed again" episode got a lot of play time on my systems--it makes me smile every time. (Disclaimer: I have ninjas on my business card.)

I think there's a lot of other great content out there both to watch and to participate in.

So to people who shrug Miro and Internet video off because "there's no good content" I say, "Buddy--this is 2007 and you're missing the boat".

What shows do you like and why? Toss your thoughts in the comments.

Update 11/16/2007: Fixed a grammar issue and somehow I managed to misspell Galacticast.

[ tags: miro | category: /miro | Permalink | View/Add Comments: 2 ]

Comments:

Posted by pwiddy on Sat Nov 17 15:37:29 2007
I was also noticing some of these comments. If the people making these comments looked at 2,846 channels and said that there was nothing on there, then fine. But there is NO way that they did that! I think this comes from a misconception that video on the internet is crap, perhaps fostered by the viral videos that abundantly circulate. So IF it were true that the Miro Guide didn't have any good content on it, and by that logic Miro isn't worth using, I sure wish that more people would apply this logic to TV. Because I sure think there is a lot of crap on there! Then we might have people saying "Oh I tried this TV thing, and saw > and it was horrible, I'll try TV in another 20 years and see if they have anything better. Will, someday they will see, some day... I like your selection of shows! I big fans of all of them except Galacticast, which I have now just subscribed to. And it is hilarious. I was cracking up watching the latest episode on the WGA strikes. :-) There are so many channels out there that I watch, it's just so hard to find a few to mention. But one thing that I ask people when I am explaining Miro to them is "What interests or Hobbies do you have?" And so far every time I have been able to find at least one channel in this area, whether it be in woodworking, home beer brewing, or yoga. My advice in finding channels is to think of what you are interested in and do a search in Miro and see what you find.

Posted by tabrez on Wed Nov 21 05:10:59 2007
It is in fact Joost that has no content at all. Great interface to show-off to friends but not useful for actual use. Hulu has some good content but nothing can come close to Miro as I can add just whatever video content I want, have them automatically downloaded and make my own custom playlist and watch them whenever I want to. My playlists may contain TV shows downloaded from torrents, google tech talks, discovery channel, national geographic, Java Posse, Lullabot(Drupal), Channel 9(Microsoft), Eclipse Live, HBO films, Archive classics, youtube downloads and many other type of content. This is not enough? It's just one person's sample of all the content available!

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