Taking into consideration Moore’s Law about technology doubling every two years or so, it’s not surprising to see the leaps and bounds “fun technologies” (ie: consumer goods, gadgets, and gizmos) have grown by recently. During my last tour of duty in Japan (2003-2004) there was really no such thing as “streaming video”. Sure, the technology may have existed, but there weren’t a bazillion sites where I could watch episodes of Western TV shows on the net two hours after they aired live in North America. We still had to download via P2P back then!
It’s been a long but short 4 years. A new blockbuster hits theatres in America on the 21st… and we’ve already been watching DVD-quality versions of it online since the 15th.
And live streaming sports? Forget about it. Oh wait… exactly. Forget about it.
I woke up at a bone-creaking 4:45am this morning to watch the Canada-Finland game at the IIHF World Championships. I thought to myself: “no longer do I have to miss out on any live event. Everything’s on the internet!” And I was right and wrong all at the same time.
I should have been expecting it however. Most (legal/real/corporate/etc) streaming sites (such as Fox On Demand have regional requirements. Why? Advertising. Burger King knows that I’m not going to fly from NRT to LAX to buy a 99 cent Whopper. They want a regionally-accessible consumer audience watching their ads. Not a bunch of hungry armchair goalies across the Pacific… even if they are craving a square of greasy cow fat and pig’s innards slapped between two halves of freeze-dried yeast. (And we are.)
So, as I logged on with glee to the live site of “Canada’s Sports Leader” TSN I was none too thrilled to see the message (after being permitted to view the requisite Molson ad) come up in the video space stating: This video is only available within Canada. Fuck.
I went to the closet and checked in my bag and found it. Yep, I’m Canadian. It says so on my passport. But was I able, as should be the God-given right of all Canadians, to watch Canada de-gill the Finns? Nope. Cuz I’m in Japan.
So in a MacGyver-like moment, I assessed my situation, took in my surroundings, and took inventory of what I had to work with: I wanted to get the Canada-Finland game live, was in a studio apartment in Tokyo, and had a latop, internet connection, gas stove, and sofa to work with. I deftly navigated to The Fan 590, “Canada’s leading sports radio station”, using my laptop and internet connection. Then, after a quick rummage through the adjacent fridge, I whipped up a 3-egg veggie & roast ham omelette utilizing the gas stove. Finally, I reclined on the sofa, enjoyed the omelette and listened to the game via The Fan 590’s live (yes, live everywhere) radio broadcast.
It’s funny… we can listen but we can’t see. It’s a rather fucked-up logic these corporate twits live by. Aural broadcasting outside one’s coveted consumer market is OK, but visual broadcasting is a cardinal sin. I think blind people should be insulted.
So with with all these increases in bit rates and improvements in compression and milestones in monitors… I found myself catching the game like my grandpa did when he was in Japan: on the radio. Oh wait… there were no games bewteen 1940-1946. But the pont is, ham radio or ham omelette, it’s comforting to know that advances in technology haven’t irradicated everything from the past. For when our advancements become our disadvantages (new word: disadvancement), we become a civilization destined to [insert rest of deep thought here].
The weekend’s new imo-jochu was Hageatama. It was the recommendation of the ladies working the sake shop next door to my building, after I asked for a light, non-stinky, sweet potato shochu that’s good to drink on the rocks.
I’m not sure whether their recommendation was supposed to be a little joke on the folically-challenged gaijin (hage atama means “bald-headed”), but they were right on the yen about this tasty little bottle from Kumamoto.
It’s not pungent at all and a very easy sip over ice. Not a bad introductory shochu for my novice palette, balding or not.
After 16 months in Japan I figure it’s finally time to get a better understanding of things Japanese. And what better thing to start with than booze? So two weeks ago, while at an old school ryokan in the onsen town of Ureshino in Saga Prefecture, I decided to start my schooling in shochu. Weaker than whiskey but stronger than wine (and sake).
As I was in Saga, I started out with Tenzan (pictured left). Not so coincidentally, it happened to be the choice of my host as well. It was good. Light and easy to drink. And drink it we did.
Sunday: Next up was another Kyushu shochu at a Miyazaki-themed izakaya in Asagaya. My friend’s wife recommended: Tomi No Hozan. It too was good.
Tuesday: We went to my favorite yakitori-ya, Miyagawa near Koenji Station’s South Exit. I tried my first shiso-based shochu. Shiso is sometimes referred to as “Japanese basil”. Does it make for good liquor? Nope. It was like drinking the forest floor. I can’t remember the name of it, but I don’t see any more shiso shochu (say that 10 times fast) in my near future anyway.
On the way home from Miyagawa we picked up a bottle of Kurokirishima from 7-11. It’s another imo-jouchu (sweet potato shouchu) from Miyazaki. It’s 24% alcohol, made with black koji mold, and got a sharp (kinda “skunky”) aftertaste.
Anyway, it’s Friday. Time for me to get to work on making my way through The Nikkei’s Top 10 Shochu on the rocks.
Gettin’ back to the blog. May as well start out with some old material from last summer in Shinjuku. An ALTA store promotion with girls in kimonos dancing along to Avril Lavigne. Coincidentally, it was on Canada Day.
The final “hurdle” (or rather, pebble) in Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick is now overcome. Those wily European Union regulators approved the $3.1 billion acquisition on Tuesday saying the deal will not hurt competition for online ads. And that may be true. AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft may still have a fighting chance in the online ad game.
However, a few years ago DoubleClick bought a little SEO/SEM shop called Performics for the bargain-basement price of $58 million. So now Google owns Performics. Google has the world’s leading search engine. Performics does search engine optimization. Conflict of interest? Naaaa.
So it seems that people are finally catching up to me and starting to see the evil that lies behind those fun & bubbly blue, yellow, red and green letters. Well, at least in the comments on the recent TechCrunch article, that is.
The two bloggers jump on the Pirate ship sounding the warning calls of “the new China”. Pirate Bay founder Brokep says “it’s dangerous when companies take the law into their own hands.” THE LAW? Where is the law that says companies with search engines must deliver all the sites on the internet? That they are prohibited from filtering results? Google’s constantly changing algorithms filter out sites. Windows Live Search seems to filter out everything.
The comments following the TechCrunch post voice their agreement, give reports from Yahoo! portals around the globe, and fall in line with the Yahoo! bashing. One commenter states “Search Engines should be open directories, showing ‘everything’ that we want to get access to.” Who says?
A search engine should index and search whatever it decides is relevant to its purpose and direction. It may be culturally or geographically focused (such as India’s Guruji) or maybe it only wants to search Wikipedia (such as Wikiseek). And even if it gives the impression that it searches the “entire” internet, there’s nothing saying it must.
Furthermore, “search” is only one of Yahoo!’s five business lines (the others being Marketplace; Information and Entertainment; Communications, Communities and Front Doors, and Connected Life.) And if Yahoo! is aiming to be a leader in online video, online games, etc., should they really support pirating the content they want to provide? Should their Board of Directors, which includes Robert Kotick (CEO of Activision), support ripping off content producers? Ripping off their own companies? Sounds like a great business model.
Google and Windows Live Search should follow suit. Actually, you’d think that MS would filter out all results for piracy, seeing as a good chunk of it is their software getting shared. (Not that anyone uses Live Search anyway.)
I find it absurd and amusing that people bitch and moan about having a publicly traded company not help them illegally distribute the content that its very own business partners, customers and owners helped to produce.
Furthermore, I didn’t need Yahoo! to help me find The Pirate Bay, TorrentReactor, TorrentSpy, or any torrent sites. And I haven’t needed Yahoo! to help me find all the streaming video sites I’m currently addicted to. A message to all those lazy leeches out there: don’t be so damn lazy.
Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch 