Digital Media

I have avoided Black Friday every year. Somehow, the idea of baying, greedy crowds fighting for $100 off some piece of electronica seems like the equivalent of searching for stray wax in a stranger's ears.

But there's a Best Buy opposite the greatest Starbucks in the world--at Marin City, Calif. (one-time home of Tupac Shakur). And, struggling after an interesting Thanksgiving meal of, well, too much good food, wine, and secrets told after the good food and wine, I parked outside my Starbucks and was drawn by the fascination of the blue and yellow.

A large sign outside Best Buy read: "Line starts here," but there was no one standing there. Had people simply ignored the sign, smashed down the doors, and stormed the building, in search of the weekend's dream of a larger, flatter screen?

I walked gingerly toward the front door, fearing I would immediately see tense bodies and twisted faces fighting over the last box with Samsung written on it. Instead, a chap in the blue polo shirt bid me good morning. Inside, it seemed like any other day at Best Buy.

People milled around with seemingly little purpose. Best Buy employees stood around, one or two stifling a little yawn, a couple of others not bothering with the stifling.

A few people hovered over the MacBook display. Should they buy the MacBook Pro, or the little white MacBook, on offer for less than $1,000?

Most of the aisles had no more than one person in them. Wandering around was as simple and comfortable as a Wednesday stroll on the beach. But finally I saw a line. What was it that was drawing so many people (at least 15) to one place?

Ah, yes, these were the excited folks trying to line up an appointment with the Geek Squad. Names were being called out. Satisfaction was being doled out.

Then I remembered I needed some ink for my printer. I wafted over to the aisle and noticed that the price of an Hewlett-Packard double pack of black ink and color had actually gone up since I'd last bought some. There didn't seem to be any special offer on this one.

Should I buy it anyway? Wouldn't it be a pain to stand in line?

Then I looked up and saw that the line at the cash registers consisted of precisely three people. Two of them were together. As I paid my $34.87, the clerk had particularly bleary eyes.

"Crazy day, huh?" I said to him.

"No," he said, in an entirely friendly way.

"Is this usual?" I asked, somewhat confused.

"Oh, yeah. I'm happy," he replied.

After he'd taken the time to tell me that the man in front of me in line had enjoyed precisely the same security code on his Amex card as mine, and after another Best Buy employee had marked my receipt with a special marker, I disappeared to Starbucks.

One of the great baristas of our time, Kershina, told me that she'd opened the store at 5 a.m. and there had been around 200 people outside Best Buy at that time.

Now, just after 9, there was no one. It was just another day in the Marin City firmament. How typical this was of the rest of America, I have no idea. However, as I took my lattes back to my car, a couple were piling their own two-pack of boxes, both with an LG logo, into theirs. They seemed strangely relaxed.

Desperate for a deal after sleeping right through Wal-Mart's early-morning Black Friday frenzy? You're in luck. The best deal this holiday season may be just a download away.

That's right: Handbrake, arguably the world's best video transcoder, just hit version 0.9.4.

And boy, is it beautiful.

Handbrake has long been my go-to choice for ripping DVDs to my hard drive (saves battery life when watching videos while traveling and ensures my kids won't ruin the DVDs), but this particular version exceeds my expectations. Why? Because it delivers over 1,000 new enhancements while delivering better picture quality at a smaller file size and faster.

Or as the Handbrake developers say:

There's an old proverb in the video encoding world: "Speed, size, quality: pick two." It means that you always have to make a trade-off between the time it takes to encode a video, the amount of compression used, and the picture quality. Well, this release of HandBrake refuses to compromise. It picks all three.

This isn't hype. In my own use of the software during the past week, performance is noticeably faster and picture quality is awesome.

Importantly, while the Handbrake developers have been hard at work over the past year to update the venerable video transcoder, the team owes a lot to developers from the x264 project:

A large portion of these speed, size, and quality improvements come to us for free, from the x264 project. The past year, like every year, has seen some massive improvements for that video encoding engine. As always, it has been further hand-optimized for better performance. But it has also gained new features like macroblock tree rate control and weighted P-Frame prediction.

This is how open-source development works: Handbrake focuses on what it does best (User interface, features like live preview, etc.) while leveraging the best of other project's strengths.

It's a recipe for a super-easy and very powerful transcoding experience. And at a 100 percent discount now through forever (Handbrake is open source and costs nothing to download), now is a good time to download it and let 'er rip, whether you run Mac (Intel 32-bit and 64-bit, plus PowerPC), Linux, or Windows.

In its attempt to redress the imbalance created by the latest Verizon ads, AT&T has hurriedly cobbled together not just one Luke Wilson ad, but several.

Curiously, one ad features precisely the same strategy as that of the latest iPhone advertising: reminding those who might still be on the fence, on the phone, or even on the lam that you can't simultaneously enjoy voice and Web surfing on the Verizon 3G network--and hence on the Motorola Droid.

So here we have Luke Wilson, still looking a little peaky and dressed in a difficult brown. Behind Luke, we have a man trying to use two phones (by implication, Verizon phones) to perform a task the iPhone will manage alone.

Some might find it entertaining that as his friend attempts to download something on one of his Verizon phones, he complains that it's all going rather slowly. Others might find this both true and funny.

AT&T hasn't merely paid Wilson a little more than 3G to make this comparison. Someone, somewhere, has, perhaps even wisely, said, "We need a map to counter Verizon's map."

So the writers hit upon the idea of a two-part extravaganza (this already aired during Tuesday's "Dancing with the Stars" finale), in which Wilson produces postcards from all the different American towns that really do--no, really--have AT&T 3G coverage.

Wilson says his job is to set the record straight, with respect to Verizon's vicious besmirching of the AT&T network. He tries his best. He tells us that AT&T covers 97 percent of all Americans--yes, 300 million people.

The AT&T map also seems far more filled-in and far more colorful than it appears in Verizon spots, though one suspects that local word of mouth might be rather stronger, in this instance, than national advertising. If you live in Spokane, Wash., for example, and you know someone there who has spotty 3G service on a particular network, that is far more powerful an influencer than any number of Wilson's postcards or Verizon's barbs.

It's enlightening, however, to discover that Wilson once dated someone in Tulsa, Okla., and it didn't work out. Did she catch him simultaneously calling and Web surfing? Perhaps we will never know.

ComScore on Wednesday released October viewing statistics for online video. And although there weren't any surprises at the top, the figures did provide some interesting insight into how users are consuming video on the Web.

According to the research firm, more than 167 million U.S.-based Web users watched video online during October. All told, they watched 28 billion videos. Google easily led the pack, servicing a whopping 38 percent of all videos Americans viewed online, with 99 percent of those videos watched on YouTube.

In a distant second, Hulu delivered 856 million videos, accounting for 3.1 percent of the market and setting a new record for monthly views. Microsoft came in third, with 451 million videos viewed on its site, capturing 1.6 percent market share.

ComScore also took a look at the total number of viewers that consumed video content during October. The research firm found that the average viewer watched 167 videos during the month. Google sites attracted 126 million unique viewers. Fox Interactive Media followed Google, with 53 million unique viewers. Yahoo sites attracted 50 million viewers. Although Hulu didn't make the top three in unique viewers, the average user watched 20.1 videos on the site during October, representing another all-time high for the site.

Some interesting tidbits rounded out ComScore's report. According to the company, 84.4 percent of all United States.-based Web users viewed online video. The average viewer watched 10.8 hours of video in October, which is especially shocking, considering that the average online video was just 3.9 minutes long.

From Firefox to IE and from Chrome to Opera and Safari, there's no sitting still for browser makers looking to keep their products fresh and competitive.

Why to embrace Firefox 3.6's new-tab ethos

A change to how the new browser positions new tabs is subtle but good, especially as browsers rise in importance. But more work is needed in tab switching.
(Posted in Deep Tech by Stephen Shankland)
November 25, 2009 11:18 AM PST

Chrome extensions site now open for uploads

Google asks programmers to start adding their Chrome extensions to the new gallery. Chrome users can't yet download them, though.
(Posted in Deep Tech by Stephen Shankland)
November 24, 2009 9:45 a.m. PST

New standard lets browsers get a grip on files

The Files interface, now a draft at the World Wide Web Consortium, could lead to better uploading and other chores. It's largely built into Firefox 3.6.
(Posted in Deep Tech by Stephen Shankland)
November 24, 2009 7:38 a.m. PST

Firefox hopes to one-up IE with fast graphics

Windows 7 features called Direct2D and DirectWrite will speed up Internet Explorer 9 performance. But Firefox hopes it might retool for the same benefit first.
(Posted in Deep Tech by Stephen Shankland)
November 24, 2009 4:00 a.m. PST

Browser-server now baked into Opera

Amid promises to "reinvent the Web," the Opera Browser debuted a new beta feature earlier this year. Opera Unite now comes as a regular feature, starting with Opera 10.10.
(Posted in The Download Blog by Seth Rosenblatt)
November 23, 2009 11:36 a.m. PST

previous coverage

Firefox: Heat and the CPU usage problem

Mozilla's browser does not efficiently use a computer's CPU and, consequently, can cause overheating problems in some laptops, particularly ultraportables.
(Posted in Nanotech: The Circuits Blog by Brooke Crothers)
November 21, 2009 9:15 a.m. PST

Browser security features compared

The newest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and other browsers all protect against phishing and malware attacks, and most also let you browse anonymously, though they implement these features in very different ways.
(Posted in Workers' Edge by Dennis O'Reilly)
November 20, 2009 9:00 a.m. PST

Mozilla reveals 2008 revenue: $79 million

The revenue growth rate tapered off to 5 percent from 12 percent the year earlier. A search deal with Google still supplies the bulk of the Firefox backer's money.
(Posted in Deep Tech by Stephen Shankland)
November 19, 2009 12:05 p.m. PST

With IE 9, Microsoft fights back in browser wars

By showing its first glimpses of technology in Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft also is showing it's serious about building a competitive browser.
(Posted in Deep Tech by Stephen Shankland)
November 18, 2009 3:02 p.m. PST

Apple updates Safari for security

A security update from Apple fixes multiple security holes in Safari, but a lack of transparency makes it hard to judge how severe the threats are.
(Posted in The Download Blog by Seth Rosenblatt)
November 11, 2009 6:17 p.m. PST

After 5 years, Firefox faces new challenges

Mozilla helped reshape the Web since releasing Firefox 1.0 five years ago. Now it's got a reawakened Microsoft and Google Chrome to reckon with.
(Posted in Deep Tech by Stephen Shankland)
November 9, 2009 4:00 a.m. PST

He calls himself Agent Zero. His shirt number is a big, fat zero. And this accurately reflects the number of tweets Gilbert Arenas has posted to his Twitter account.

It's not that Arenas, the Washington Wizards point guard, isn't confident of his literary skills. Oh, no. Just look at his finely sculpted blog.

However, according to The Washington Post, Arenas has no interest in being a small time Twitter player. He wants 1 million followers before he will start to offer tweets from his copious and wondrous life and imagination.

Just last week Arenas told the Associated Press that he's chosen to go for 1 million because "it's so far-fetched."

And when some cruel know-it-all tried to point out that the way folks normally get followers is, well, by tweeting, Arenas replied with the sagacity of Wittgenstein: "I'm trying to do the opposite."

So that you can get some sense of Arenas' twittering possibilities, I have embedded a small piece of film featuring the Arenas bobblehead, quite a character in its own right.

However, I know you'll be wondering just how far away Arenas is from achieving immortal far-fetchendess. Well, he's pretty close to catching Shaquille O'Neal, who enjoys just over 2.5 million followers.

Yes, Arenas has already amassed, at the time of typing this, 5,717 followers. Perhaps the 4-9 Wizards will need to win a few more games before his Twitter page is swamped by mass anticipation of Arenas' first tweet.

The unveiling of the iPhone, the debut of Twitter, and the growth of Craigslist are just three of the decade's most influential Internet moments, as judged by the Webby Awards.

The folks behind the Webby Awards, presented each year for excellence on the Internet, dove into the top 10 craze this week, laying out their picks for the Internet developments of the past 10 years that have had the greatest reverberations. (And no, they're not a year ahead of schedule, despite the tendency of list makers to rally in years that end in '10. The decade technically runs from 2000 to 2009, with 2010 being the start of the next decade.)

The Webby Awards rundown of the decade in chronological order:

• Craigslist moving outside San Francisco in 2000 to revamp the whole notion of classified ads, striking fear in the hearts of newspapers everywhere.
• The launch of Google AdWords in 2000, opening up a new world of advertising for businesses both large and small.
• The start of Wikipedia in 2001 showing off the Internet's ability to let online strangers collaborate, leading to more than 14 million articles in 271 different languages.
• The takedown of Napster in 2001, triggering a revolution in the way we now grab our music and videos.
• Google's IPO in 2004, creating a massive, dominant, and far-reaching force on the Internet.
• The online video revolution in 2006 triggered by beefy bandwidth, cheap camcorders, and YouTube, flooding cyberspace with an array of professional and not-so-professional videos.
• The expansion of Facebook and the debut of Twitter in 2006, creating a fresh way for us to interact and communicate with friends and family.
• The launch of the iPhone in 2007, helping us hop onto the Internet anywhere, anytime through a cell phone.
• The U.S. presidential campaign in 2008 tapping into the Internet with videos like "Obama Girl," social networking use among voters, and online fundraising.
• The Iranian election protesters in 2009 using Twitter to spread their word, a movement that prompted the U.S. State Department to ask Twitter to keep the site up and running.

That's a pretty good list, but of course it immediately started us thinking about the influential Internet-related moments and developments from 2000 to 2009 that got short shrift or that got left off entirely.

Our list, in no particular order:

• The debut and growth of Firefox: The first browser to challenge the IE monopoly, Firefox now holds a 25 percent market share, paving the way for other players like Google Chrome.
• The arrival of blogging: Started as simple online diaries, blogs have grown to become a valid and valued source of news, opinion, and information. As a corollary, there's the rise of RSS, which lets the latest information come to us instead of our having to go out and find it.
• The surge in broadband: The availability of DSL, cable, satellite, and now Fios put a nail in the coffin for dial-up access, letting us download files in seconds, watch each other on webcams, and stream high-res videos.
• The allure of torrents: Whether used for legal or illegal file sharing, technologies like BitTorrent let us share and download all types of content across the Web from movies and TV shows to software. And speaking of movies and TV--the popularity of sites like Hulu and Netflix demonstrated that you no longer need a costly cable TV subscription to indulge your viewing inclinations.
• The reinvention of the telephone. On the one hand, there were VoIP services such as Skype, which saved us from expensive long-distance bills. On the other was 3G technology and mobile broadband, which let us jump into cyberspace from our phones, Netbooks, and a host of other portable gadgets.
• The rise of home workers: Thanks to the Internet, you can now run a full-fledged business or work for your employer without having to leave the house. There's also online education--with many accredited schools now online, today you can attend college or graduate school and get a full degree from your own computer.
• The ascent of Salesforce and cloud computing: With the success of cloud-computing providers like Salesforce, companies can now run much of their business online without the hassle of maintaining their own internal resources.
• The looming menace of cyberwarfare: On the downside, the Internet showed signs of becoming a new virtual battleground between countries, as in the purported cyberattacks against Estonia and Georgia.
• The lessons of the dot-com crash: The decade was barely under way when that bubble burst hard; wildly inflated stocks were tanking and Wall Street was reeling, frenetically hyped Web companies were imploding, and our retirement plans took a beating. That seem so long ago now, what with the current miserable state of the economy, post-housing bubble crash.

Do you agree or disagree with those picks? Sound off in the comments section below.

The Swedish town of Malmo is a wonderful place.

Some feel it is wonderful because it is the spiritual home of a band that was once cool, the Cardigans.

But now all committed social networkers will think Malmo is wonderful because of its IKEA. You see, the Swedish purveyor of fast-food furniture decided to open a new store in Malmo and didn't really have a lot of money to let people know about it.

So it engaged a rather outre advertising agency called Forsman and Bodenfors to create a rather special launch campaign.

The agency created a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Over a two-week period, it uploaded images from of IKEA showrooms to his Facebook photo album.

Then it put out word that the first person to tag their name to a product in the pictures, won it.

Facebook being what it is, word got out and needy, enthusiastic Swedes begged for more pictures so that they could tag themselves to a new sofa, a new bed, or a new vase into which they could stick their plastic flowers or their dead grandparents' ashes.

Before Facebook could take credit for its own wonderful ingenuity in creating the world's most needed Web site, thousands of Swedes were spreading pictures of IKEA showrooms all around the personal galaxy known as their profile pages.

Please look at the video I have embedded, as this idea is, as the best always are, simple and inspired. Which, some would say, also perfectly describes the clever, affordable, if sometimes maddening-to-put-together little things made by IKEA.

Insurance companies want us to be healthy. Really, they do. They have our interests at heart, and they defend those interests with an unusual zeal. This is why I am wondering which details might be missing from the tale of Natalie Blanchard.

According to the Associated Press, Blanchard, a 29-year-old IBM employee from Bromont, Quebec, was suffering from depression and took time away from work, relying on sick-leave benefits from her insurer, Manulife Financial.

The monthly payments were suddenly halted. When she called Manulife to ask why, she says she was told that it had espied photos on her Facebook page that showed her cheerful. Ergo, the argument allegedly went, she was able to work. Which led to the second ergo: no more payments.

The pictures, about which I am sure you are already wondering, were of her at a show featuring those tensing torsos, the Chippendales, as well as at a birthday party and on a beach holiday.

Depression is a nasty business. Cures are not exactly logical. And Blanchard says she went on three trips, each of a four-day duration, after consulting with her psychiatrist.

Manulife, while confirming (footage from Sky News embedded here) that it does use social-networking sites to, well, check up on its customers, also said, "We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on Web sites such as Facebook."

Perhaps you, too, have some questions. What sort of a life is it when you spend your days trawling social-networking sites to sniff around your customers' personal existence? How is it that Manulife observed Blanchard's photos? Did she leave her Facebook page entirely open, or could it be that she had her insurance agent as one of her Facebook friends? Was she, indeed, already under suspicion before the Facebook trawling began?

December 8, this case will be heard in the Quebec Superior Court. Surely, we will learn a little more about Natalie Blanchard and a little more about Manulife. Perhaps Facebook could provide a live feed from the proceedings?