faboo mama

Image via CrunchBase

Last summer when I was first introduced to Hulu, I thought it was a nice service. There were a few movies on there that my kids enjoyed, some clips of TV shows I had once found amusing, but for my taste it was definitely lacking.

I’ve been a Netflix customer since 2001 (You can add me as a friend here). Naturally, the service is more appealing to me; the DVDs come and they go back when I feel like it. But Netflix changed the game when they offered up Watch Instantly. Suddenly, we were hooking up our laptop to the TV so we could watch the available movies & TV shows.  Last fall, when Microsoft enabled Netflix on our Xbox 360, we saw no reason to keep our bloated cable package.  We still have our basic cable +HD tier, but we’ve scaled back our other packages losing HBO, Starz, IFC and Encore; the movie channels we’d watch on those rare times we turned on the TV to zone out. But since the only show we actively watch on TV is LOST, anything else flies under the radar. (Sidenote, we never actually sit down to watch LOST when it’s on, instead we watch it on the DVR about 30 minutes to an hour after air time. Even if we didn’t do that, we could still watch LOST on ABC.com the next day.)

These past few days, I’ve had the pleasure of checking out Hulu. If you’re subscribed to me on FriendFeed or have clicked the FriendFeed tab above, you’ve seen the recent Hulu clips I’ve posted. (You can also subscribe to me on Hulu if you’re in the US and have an account.) Yes, the site is still a headache to navigate, but if you take the time to go through the genres available, you’ll find a lot of gems.  One feature I’m in love with on Hulu is the embed feature. On Friday, I took the movie Jesus Christ Superstar, narrowed down to the song I wanted and embedded that clip into my Tumbler blog.

I used to rely heavily on YouTube to show my kids clips of old TV shows I used to watch. On YouTube, the quality of these old show clips are usually quite horrible.  Last night, I pulled up several Sesame Street clips that I’ve watched on YouTube and was amazed at the high-quality of the clips.  Even comparing movies available on Hulu versus movies available on Netflix Watch Instantly, Hulu wins out with the better quality video watching on the same computer. Piping Netflix through the Xbox 360 as a Time Warner Cable customer leaves a lot to be desired. The video quality is on par with watching an old VHS cassette on a VCR taking its last breath.

With Netflix you’re paying monthly, naturally that means no ads.  On Hulu, short ads (30 seconds) are interspersed throughout the episodes or you have an option of watching all the ads at once and then have uninterrupted play.  You can also vote on the ads, which makes viewing them a little more tolerable. The ads you rate down, don’t get shown any more. The ads are so non-invasive that I’ve never even bothered to count how many times you get interrupted during a show. Unlike say, watching ABC.com, where the ads are way too long, and you have that 15 second - 30 second buffer at the end of each 1 minute bank of ads. I can not speak to YouTube’s ad policy on their Shows page, as I haven’t witnessed any ads during the short test periods.

YouTube recently announced its Shows page. The genre breakdowns mirror Hulu’s and most of the content available on YouTube is also available on Hulu.  Running on my netbook, where a Hulu show can take about 13 seconds to load, YouTube shows take about 2 minutes. The only appealing thing YouTube has that Hulu doesn’t is a Foreign movie section, with automatic subtitles. That means, for me several full-length Bollywood classics. This works for me because I often rent them from the local Indian markets and the quality of the DVDs are often bad.  Some of the same Bollywood movies are available via Netflix Watch Instantly, but then we’re back to the quality, and yes YouTube offers better quality than Netflix in this case too.

Between Netflix, YouTube and Hulu, I’m hard pressed to find a valid reason to keep my cable. It seems the only reason I have it, is so that the kids can watch their shows and my husband can watch the HD channels in the wee hours of the morning. Sure, there are bonuses of cable, such as the ability to let the kids watch OnDemand in our bedroom, streaming music from MusicChoice, even though we use Last.fm or Pandora more often than we play our physical albums. Right now, having cable is the only thing keeping our internet bill low, but that’s becoming more and more less valid as a reason. After all, why pay for something we’re not using?

Image via Wikipedia

I got this spam email today. It’s a classic story.

from Anok Garang <[email protected]> reply-to [email protected] to date Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 4:22 PM subject Hello Dear mailed-by msn.com

hide details Apr 11 (1 day ago)

Reply

Hello Dear

Goodday, I am writing this mail with tears, sadness and pains. I know it will come to you as a surprise since we haven’t known or come across each other before considering the fact that I sourced your email contact through the Internet in search of trusted person who can assist me.

I am Miss Anok John Garang 24 years old female from the Republic of Sudan, the Daughter of Late Dr. John Garang. Before my late father’s death in Uganda on 31st of July 2005, was vice president and former rebel leader of Sudan and was kill by Sudan President Omar al Bashir in helicopter crash. You can read more about my father in the link below. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2134220.stm.

I am constrained to contact you because of the maltreatment which I am receiving from my step mother. She planned to take away all my late father’s treasury and properties from me since the unexpected death of my beloved Father. Meanwhile I wanted to travel to Europe, but she hide away my international passport and other valuable documents. Luckily she did not discover where I kept my father’s File which contained important documents. Now I am presently staying in the Mission in Burkina Faso. I am seeking for long term relationship and investment assistance. My father of blessed memory deposited the sum of US$10.5 Million in one bank in Burkina Faso with my name as the next of kin. I had contacted the Bank to clear the deposit but the Branch Manager told me that being a refugee, my status according to the local law does not authorize me to carry out the operation. However, he advised me to provide a trustee who will stand on my behalf. I had wanted to inform my stepmother about this deposit but I am afraid that she will not offer me anything after the release of the money.

Therefore, I decide to seek for your help in transferring the money into your bank account while I will relocate to your country and settle down with you. As you indicated your interest to help me I will give you the account number and the contact of the bank where my late beloved father deposited the money with my name as the next of kin. It is my intention to compensate you with 20% of the total money for your assistance and the balance shall be my investment in any profitable venture which you will recommend to me as have no any idea about foreign investment. Please all communications should be through this email address only for confidential purposes.

Thanking you a lot in anticipation of your quick response. I will send you details in my next email for you to know me well.

Yours  Miss Anok

Despite the fact that my post on Social Networkouts went largely ignored, I’ve decided to go ahead to something about it anyway. The American Heart Association is sponsoring National Start Walking Day on April 8th.  All they’re asking for is 30 minutes of walking from you that day.  Why 30 minutes?

Taking just 10 minutes three times a day to walk will help you live longer. In fact, studies show that just one hour of vigorous exercise will increase your life expectancy by two hours. It makes sense to walk more and eat well — to live longer. (AHA)

So we are going to meet at Echo Park at 6:30pm and walk the perimeter of the park.  That way even those who can’t make it until 7pm will still be able to get some walk time in with the group.  Runners are encouraged too.  Everyone who participates will get a sticker.

Where to go:

We will meet at the entrance to the park at the corner of Glendale Blvd. and Park Ave., just south of Sunset Ave. We will be walking the sidewalk around the park, so meet up with us at any point.
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Please click through as this shows you the start point for our meetup.

What to bring:

• Comfortable walking/running shoes
• Water or sports drink
• Healthy snack
• Towel
• Happy attitude

I am open to any other suggestions you may have.  

Please RSVP at Upcoming so that I’ll be sure to have enough stickers.  Tell your friends & family and please share this post with anyone you know in LA.

Check back here as I post videos and other health tips leading up to the big day. ?See you at the park!

Meetups of users of various online communities have been happening for some time now. In just the past 6 years, I’ve met women from a birth club board for lunch playdates, have potluck dinners with people from political sites, teas with online friends from gardening forums and recently met up with FriendFeed users at local burger joint. But you see the problem; it’s all involving food. I’d say that 95% of the meetups I’ve had with people has been surrounding food. ?On one hand, good food and drink are great social lubricators. Beyond the topic discussed on these sites what other conversational ice breaker is there that doesn’t seem awkward and insincere. Recently, I’ve been wondering why there aren’t more meetups of an active sort among these groups.

When you get into the personal realm in these online communities, the topic of weight loss and food issues come up pretty frequently. People share recipes, discuss what they had for dinner or talk about their time at the gym. Yet, when we get together our first thought is what restaurant to meet at or is it a potluck. Why not do something different? Why not make a meetup where we all take a yoga class or just a simple hike in Griffith Park??

At LA Metblogs, Will Campbell organized a day long through LA. I wish I could have made it but either I was busy healing or just busy. This guy Mike organized a walk through LA to celebrate his 10 years as an Angeleno. It became an annual event and last year was the 3rd year of Great LA Walk. The same day as the FriendFeed meetup, the Los Angeles Flickr group organized a photowalk around Union Station. These are all great ways to get some activity in a meetup.?

Many would suggest that I search sites like Active or Gyminee to find people who’d be willing to do an activity. I’ve tried that, but since I’m not active in those communities it’s a bit hard. ?To make it more frustrating for me is that most people who put Los Angeles in their profiles live in OC, the Valley or the west side. ?There’s nothing really local for me here in Northeast Los Angeles. The few people I’ve found in Pasadena put up posts like, “Looking for a partner for quick 10 mile trail run at 5am.” Yeah…10 mile, trail, and 5am effectively exclude me. ?

My logic in wanting to do a meetup around a physical activity has a lot to do with support. Sure, I could find a group to run with on Gyminee, but they don’t “know” me & I don’t know them. I’m sure they’ll be supportive of my efforts, but will they get my sense of humor? What if they all want to talk politics or tech while running? Whereas say I organize a Twitter/FriendFeed meetup, we all know each other from there and the activity will be more focused on fun versus getting mileage in.

Tell me. Am I off-base here or is anyone else interesting in doing something like this? Even if it’s a simple as a hike through Griffith Park ending in a picnic (more food!), that’s still more active than a group of us sitting around chatting…you know, like we do on our computers anyway.

This is what runs through my mind when I’m starving and looking for something to eat:

Just heads up for anyone else in Los Angeles, we are going to have a meet up at Five Guys this coming Saturday.

What I posted on FriendFeed:

Our East Coast friends got us curious, but Anna Lynn tipped us to the fact that there’s a couple here in SoCal. So join us *next Saturday (02.21.09) @2pm * to see if Five Guys is indeed better than In-N-Out: Cerritos Promenade ~ 11461 South Street Cerritos, CA 90703 ~

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Last week, Microsoft opened up Windows Live, their answer to “social media”.  Right off the bat, you can see why it’s a massive fail. Once you remember your Hotmail account from the mid-90s, use your Xbox or Zune login, you can see how the UI is very user-unfriendly.  Importing feeds from other services is the only thing that’s quick and easy.  However, if you want to add friends, you’re stuck with contacting them via Hotmail accounts that have long been deactivated or given over to spam.  You can also add people via LinkedIn or Facebook, but that’s only provided those resources work.  When I tested them last week, neither of them would invite contacts.  This is fine with me as I don’t want my contacts from either site on this one.

Windows Live Home

This is your Home page.  From here you can see what your friends are doing.  What you can not do is actually interact with your friends on this page. So say I wanted to comment on Thomas’ photo, I can either click the Flickr link, hunt for the photo and make a comment or I can go to Thomas’s page, make a comment there and hopes he sees it.

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The top buttons next to the link are promote and remove. The buttons down next to ‘Note this’ is a comment button.

Google Search Buttons

This could be a great move or a bad idea depending on blogswarm leanings.  But for me, I’m happy that I can now search for items and have the option of removing fringe hate sites like Hot Air out of my search stream.

Image by Captain Nandu Chitnis, BikeNomads via Flickr

President-Elect Obama’s new site, Change.gov went live today. Right now, the site is taking a pretty big hit, and is slow.  The page links are interesting and shore up President-Elect Obama’s promise to make his administration more transparent than previous ones.  Check out the Ethics link:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s Plan

Shine the Light on Washington Lobbying

• Centralize Ethics and Lobbying Information for Voters: Obama and Biden will create a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports, ethics records, and campaign finance filings in a searchable, sortable and downloadable format.
• Require Independent Monitoring of Lobbying Laws and Ethics Rules: Obama and Biden will use the power of the presidency to fight for an independent watchdog agency to oversee the investigation of congressional ethics violations so that the public can be assured that ethics complaints will be investigated.

There’s even a box on the page, so you can make suggestions.

Mirroring the key issues and interests that were on Sen. Obama’s candidate sites, the website expands those policy positions into actionable items.  There is a blog, a listing of upcoming events beginning with the inauguration and a link to apply for non-career jobs with the Obama Administration. You can share your own story of your experience of living in this moment in American history on the site too.

Throughout his campaign, Sen. Obama was persistent and consistent in stating that the American citizen should be ready to work for America.  That students who wanted help with their college education would have to do community service.  Sticking to that pledge is a link that helps you to find a suitable place for you to work for your country.

When the site isn’t so bogged down, take a look around.