Blubrry.com launched today and podcasting networks for listeners and podcasters, just got all growed up. ;-)

It's the most insane idea ever. Taking a character built on actual, real time experiences, out of the virtual space, to establish himself in the real world space. You know Lara. You know Max.

And soon, you'll meet Spin.

Brought to you by Hipcast and PodcasterNews.com.... soon, everyone will learn how to podcast. ;-)

The gaming lounge. It's loaded with Xbox 360s and big-ass Alienware systems and big-ass wide panel plasmas and LCDs. And it's quiet, and not really filled. Interestingly enough, the second chapter in my Second Life story flies in the face of "Second Life is Not A Game" .... and it's not. But what if it was made into it? Or what if it was used to make one? And back to gaming, is there a cultural disconnect between the bloggerati and gamers?

Go back to SL. DIY culture. Fast forward about five years. Intellectual Property ownership on an Xbox Life platform?

And why is the first thing we think of when we utter the words 'mobility' or 'mobile phones' always involve 100% game play, instead of incremental and ancillary services to take parts of that digital life on the road? Inventory Management... parsing data... getting updates on our social networks.... with a scaled down window into our world. Perhaps?

Foreshadowing: Don't forget the role of music in games.

I guess you need to find me at Gnomedex to know what that means, huh?

Update: ok, maybe a hint: what if you combined every type of media, distribution, the internets, the wikis, the metaverses, and about four business models? ;-)

It doesn't matter what the medium. If you want to win, do everything. Write some words, speak into a microphone, and stand in front of a camera. And think of all the formats that it might show up--- in the car, on the television, on the iPod, on CD, on a mobile phone. Watch your buzzwords. And know that you have little restrictions any more. And then get paid.

We. Are. Democracy.

Time to party, our show's turning FIVE, and we'd never thought we'd be in the music scene, with Tower and Slackstreet Music. We're on iPods, MP3 players, and mobile phones all over the place. To pay that forward, we're going to start featuring our band friends over on MySpace, and doing our best to pimp local shows. Know a band? send 'em over!

(If you haven't, add us to MySpace. :D

The virtual-based Multiverse Records, in an effort to expand its growth and innovation, is becoming part of a new music division of Slackstreet Entertainment and will be re-introduced as Slackstreet Music, spanning not only the virtual space of performances and promotion and sales, but also to crossover into the physical space and evolve into a real-world music entity that hopes to redefine the structure of the record label and services industry to put more power and ownership into the hands of the artists and bands.

So, instead of doing long posts, I'll throw out some one-liners. Cuz there's a lot brewing. And I'm at Gnomedex, the tech conference in Seattle.

IODA's Promonet (the engine used to power the music selections we use on the Eric Rice Show), continues to forge ahead in providing podsafe (in English: Rights Cleared) music for podcasters, bloggers, and internet radio. Continuing to dominate, this news comes out about IODA and Harry Fox.

The Harry Fox Agency (HFA) has recently finalized a digital download agreement with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA). The move will allow IODA to broaden its portfolio of services to member labels. Among the benefits, IODA founder and CEO Kevin Arnold pointed to minimized business administration concerns for client labels, something that would allow them to "keep their focus on making great music". San Francisco-based IODA distributes content for a number of labels and artists across various digital storefronts.

Article Link - IODA Promonet - Eric Rice Show on TowerPod

This weekend, I'm whipping out a big mixing bowl and throwing in the blog, the podcast, and the videoblog into a single spot. The RSS feeds will remain the same, and the new URL will be ericrice.com/blog. Archives will remain in the old spot here.

It's time to start from zero again.

I saw this one coming, and will be interesting to see what 2007 holds for her. Some of you have no idea who Brookers is, and some of you do. ;-) I'm not going to link to anything but the variety article. Link Go Brookers!

Wow. NBC + YouTube. Time to re-work the biz plans. /smirk

Blue skies, 71 degrees, on the water. Getting ready for Gnomedex 6.0 and tomorrow night's SL meetup.

<3


Download File

I'm sitting here fingering a new deck of cards--- not the poker kind, but a deck of Soul Caliber III CCG, that use the Universal Fighting System. Combat via cardboard. (I got the Taki deck ;-)

And my local anime 101 store also got me to pick up a few booster packs for Zatchbell, both English and Japanese versions, while also bringing me up to speed on what's been happening with things like Pokemon, Yu-gi-Oh!, and Magic The Gathering (which I did play for about two weeks, a very very long time ago).

Enter Combat Cards, a fighting CCG (collectible card game) that takes place in the virtual space, and soon, in the real world space. A game, you might say, that was developed in a 'game'.

The idea is simple. You get an empty deck with some starter cards, and can buy the virtual booster packs to add valuable offensive and defensive moves to your deck. If you've played with NAMCO's UFS decks, this probably sounds familiar. Try and pscyh out your opponent, guessing what he or she might play next. You can choose cards with moves like Thrusting Lunge, Gallant Guard, Dragon Swipe, Gut Rip, Tiger Pounce (pictured here), or an Osprey Dive (to name a few)

This idea was brought to my attention by Doc Boffin, a gent in England who has been working on this with a variety of talented folks, including Osprey Therian, who makes the artwork for the cards. With so many avatars in the LBC (sorry I couldn't resist dropping in a Snoop Dogg reference), you can see the potential for endless designs. These things are beautful and the game is simply fun. (I suck at it, but hey)

Combat Cards has a tutorial on how to play and a server to pick up decks in Westport's Snake Pit Arena or at The Kill Club in Europa.

It's in playable beta right now and will officially launch shortly after Gnomedex. Until then, either visit the locations above or stop by the Real Life Seattle SL Meetup taking place Thursday 6/29 from 5-7 PM at the Edgewater Hotel. See a demo and whoop my ass.

For Father's Day, I got a shiny (well, ok flat black) new 13" Macbook, loaded with 2GB of RAM and a shiny screen (love shiny screens---used them before with an HP). I called this bad boy the BlackBook, and later, the DragonBook, because a single sticker adorns it-- that of a torqued up red dragon, surrounded by flames and claws outstretched to kill.

And that's almost where the bad-assness of this thing ends.

Here's what I like, and like A LOT:

1. This is my second intel-based mac, the first one being a slightly slower Mac mini. I had heard countless reports that the Intel-based Macs reign surpreme over their predecessors in editing Hi-Def (HD) video. This is totally true. I've even seen better results than one of the dual processor G5 Towers here. The Intels kick ass.

2. Software that runs natively-- Universal Binaries. A HUGE improvement in performance (for the apps you can find at this early stage in the game).. I especially notice this with 3D software over the previous processors. And running an application under Rosetta, the thing that lets older pre-Intel apps run, is somewhat painful, but it works.

3. The on board camera and mic. Awesome awesome awesome. And if you use a podcast service like Hipcast, audio and video recording to the browser is the easiest I've ever seen it. I've also video conferenced with family who is on vacation. Awesome stuff. CAVEAT: When you open the laptop, you are putting pressure and pulling RIGHT where the lens is. I expect this to break.

That's where the good stuff ends. Now for the bad.

1. Finish. You'd think I eat fried chicken all day and never wash my hands and smear it repeatedly everywhere. I don't even have to clean my shiny black iPod this much. The trackpad is already showing signs of wear, and this thing is barely a month old.

2. Screen Hinge Creaks Like a Rusty Gate. Maybe I should rub some of the fried chicken grease around it?

3. One dead battery, another one coming, or just bad bad power management.
This one scares the hell outta me. I was working one day and the second and unplugged to go mobile, the whole machine hard powered down. I was able to duplicate this each and everytime. Even with a full battery, when I unplugged my laptop, it died.

Now luckily, my wife has one too. So I ganked her battery and everything is fine---- well almost. Now instead of it powering down when I unplug, lately, it has unpredictable power downs, even when it's plugged in. I am not even doing the same thing each time it randomly dies. It's so random, I can't duplicate it. And, since I'm a day away from travelling, I'm now taking TWO laptops with me, because I fear the luck of having this machine go down while I'm on the road.

4. Re-awakening from sleep. It used to be that the Mac laptops would be awake, up and running between the time it took you to unlatch and lift the screen to its upright position. NOW, this thing acts like my Tablet PC and other PC laptops I have owned. Lift the screen and well, wait. Sometimes, I can see the shadows of what is on the screen, but the display is dark for sometimes a good 30 seconds.

--
Other things I notice but don't really care much about-- yes, my Macbook does make the mooing noise that people have reported. Eh, not a biggie. But it's there. The machine can get nuclear hot. Right now, with just Mail.app, IRC and Safari open, the processor is running about 66 degrees Celsius. I've seen it up to 90.

It's frustrating, only since I'm used to a certain fast and flawless computing environment that the Mac has been for me. I use both operating systems-- Windows and MacOS, and it's always been hands down a better experience with the Mac. I use all the lame mainstream software that everyone uses, I never have to deal with the slightest drama with the operating system nagging me about stuff every five seconds. I get twice as much done. It's pretty sweet.

Of course, many of these thigns can be attributed to first version blues. My iPod Video was the first run, and it's buggy as hell. Not as much as this laptop, however. Is this stuff getting rushed out the door? Can't blame Apple for doing that, I guess. The 0wn the mp3 player market and now their computers will run whatever you want to run. Windows. Mac. Linux. Unix. Doesn't matter. It's a computer.

So there it is, my own first hand experiences with my Macbook. I still like it I guess, I just hate being knocked down to the levels of PC-based computers everywhere. Arrogant, perhaps, but I never denied it for a second. ;-)

Robert posted a thing about a dude who doesn't like podcasting, like it's some new three-assed monkey or something that we've never ever seen before.

And of course, this brings standard snarky geeks out of the woodwork, yes I'm one too-- with replies that don't even make sense.

Please please please, if you are going to diss something like audio, that requires the use of the senses that are in your ears (two appendages on each side of that meatloaf you call a head), please compare it to something relative, not, "I don't like listening to podcasts, making a hamburger is better."

So here's a little story I whipped up.
--

Once upon a time, there was an audio file and sometimes his little cousin, video. One day, they happened upon this nice person called podcasting who drove a nice chariot with the license plate "RSS". And then, the audio and little cousin video, could be automatically delivered to happy people around the world who wanted to listen to them and watch them. This was just like in the olden days when the wise old Mr. Text was also driven around by a nice person called Blogging, in that same chariot.

And the people rejoiced around the land. They found all the little audio and little cousin video people all over the place and shouted from the top of the mountain. "Yes, please come to us!"

And it was good and we all lived happily ever after, until the big zombie snark plague came around wanting nothing more that to eat our BRAAAAAINS. The end.

Debi asks, "Whatchoo gonna quit?" Gotta ponder this one, because I'm not entirely sure. I'm feeling pretty worn out lately.

Had a cool time hanging with Mobile Jones and Zadi, on this two part installment of Media Slaves, a relatively new program for those involved with (or brand new to) today's new media landscape.

We talked about MySpace, the mobile lifestyle, Second Life, Hipcast and other stuff.

Get it delivered free in iTunes here
Get both parts of this episode here.

"Don't be skimmin!"

Textbook snark about the virtual world: "I don't have enough time for my first life, much less a second one."

And then:
American Cancer Society Relay for Life; Second411; American Apparel; Universal rapper Chamillionaire

So, there ya go. Heh.