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I did it! I unplugged the television. Did I stop watching video content? No way. I have been using a combination of Hulu, Joost and Miro. I mainly use Miro but if I run out of content, I’ll switch over to the other sites.

Why does Miro occupy most of my viewing? The cool thing about Miro is that its basically a video podcast player so I can subscribe to all kinds of video content that actually interests me. Tom Green (http://tomgreen.com/) fills my talkshow needs. I also subscribe to NBC Nightly News for my mainstream news. However the greatest feature is being able to subscribe to Cousin Slappy’s American Idol podcast that he does from Nebraska. Miro supports RSS and Bittorrent for your downloading pleasure. There is also support for multiple file types including high definition. Miro includes a guide that has thousands of shows.

Joost (http://joost.com) is an Internet TV service that was developed by guys from Skype and Kazaa. Joost offers shows that they have negotiated with content providers. Commercials cut in on the shows every now and then. Some of the content that had my attention was the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and Comedy Central’s Joost Channel.

Hulu (http://hulu.com) is a response to iTunes from NBC and FOX. The two old media companies formed Hulu to use the Internet to take advantage of current shows and their back catalog too. You can find Family Guy and your childhood favorites What’s Happening and the A-Team on the show menu. Most of the shows are not complete but there is enough meat in the sandwich to keep you entertained.

Are you ready to junk your television? Probably not. In the future there will be so many different options it may not matter. Television is now starting to feel like radio did when television exploded. Once there are 10,000 channels it will be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle.

Discussion on the Hype Anvil Network

The Guardian UK’s The Observer (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/) has a great post called The world’s 50 most powerful blogs.

What exactly is nanoblogging? Well currently it is known by many names. Nanoblogging, microblogging, or lifestreaming. They are basically the same thing, a variation on short messages. Regular blogging may be several paragraphs of rich content, however most microblog posts are under 150 characters or so. These extremely brief thoughts can be extremely powerful in their reach. By friending, subscribing or following folks that are microblogging, you can build a stream of consciousness of information that can be extremely useful. When these folks start following you, however then there is a huge opening for blatant self promotion. Whenever you post a blog, release a podcast or share a link, using a microblog is the best place to make the announcement. For example, when I post an article on Hype Anvil, I immediately announce the post and link in my microblogging communities as well as social communities. Because folks are following you on these services, they are expecting announcements from you and are more likely to respond to them.What are the best nanoblogging communities? By far the most popular system is Twitter (http://twitter.com) Twitter is where a majority of people are. You should be there too. Having a presence on the most popular systems is a better choice than just choosing one system. Pownce (http://pownce.com) is starting to pick up steam. Pownce allows more rich content than Twitter and have opened their API to help move innovation forward.If you would like to add me to your Twitter or Pownce, use the following URLs.http://pownce.markramsey.com or http://twitter.markramsey.com

Discussion on the Hype Anvil Network

Here’s a great post from Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo (http://mahalo.com), it discusses alot of real world examples of how to save money running a startup business.

Greetings,Hype Anvil is a destination to discuss and share ideas about new media and utility computing.Enjoy!