In preparation for the third season of its hit series "Mad Men," cable network AMC has put out a new marketing tool called "Mad Men Yourself." It lets fans of the show create themselves (or their friends) as early-1960s cartoon characters using a variety of costumes, props, and body parts that are loosely tied to the world within the show.
Set to rhythmic lounge lizard music, you can assemble your virtual self piece by piece. When done, you can then download and export your creation in sizes ready for Twitter, Facebook, and as desktop wallpapers.
It's not nearly as fun as the one Fox did for "The Simpsons Movie" back in mid-2007 (nor is there a 7-11 tie-in), but there are a wealth of options to make yourself look as similar, or "out there" as you wish.
The closest I could get was looking like Kevin Spacey with a mean five o'clock shadow. See if you can do better.
Put your virtual 1960s self together in style. Or just ditch the suit and grab a donut and an eye patch.
(Credit: CNET)
Last week I got a chance to meet with J.D. Heilprin, the founder and president of a new video service called Modern Feed. It's a smart product, taking hosted video programming from a variety of sources and consolidating it into a single directory that's curated by human beings. The entire experience revolves around a small navigator that sits atop your browser in its own frame. It lets you browse around playlists, search for your favorite shows, and jump around to various content providers without getting lost.
What makes the product noteworthy is that it's taken some of the annoyances out of viewing professionally produced content on the Web. For example, if there are several places to get the same piece of content, the human curators, known as "feeders" go through and pick out the best one to send you to based on video quality, stream speed, and ease of use. It will also tell you how to get at the video if there are steps you need to take to get the video to start playing. Each time you click to play a video you can preview this information before being jettisoned off-site. It's a really nice touch.
Modern Feed programming listings contain multiple streams, so if you want to view a certain format you can go straight to the source. (click to enlarge)
Playlist management is also well thought out. You can subscribe to shows on a season pass, just as you would on a DVR. The newest shows end up in your queue and can be reordered. There's also a designation between a regular playlist and one for iPhones, which contains any H.264 files that can be played on the device if you don't feel like viewing on your PC. Viewing and browsing these clips requires the use of the specially designed iPhone site (i.modernfeed.com) and a Wi-Fi connection, but the implementation is quite beautiful. Heilprin says the designers took a page or two from Facebook's iPhone app, and that they plan to make other device-optimized versions in the future.
At launch there are more than 25,000 programs in the directory. There's a built-in search tool that does a great job at getting you to various shows. The real hook, however are the feeder-created categories, which are far more enjoyable to explore than simply browsing alphabetically. The feeders have created picks the like of iTunes with staff choices and hot lists of what users are watching the most. It makes the site very human and keeps you watching tons of videos from all over the place.
While Hulu may have gotten some real buzz for its convergence of video resources, Modern Feed is doing something far bigger. It's lassoing content from everywhere. It's doing what social aggregators like FriendFeed and SocialThing have done so well, which is putting all this information into one centralized location. The added benefit is that Modern Feed has made it exceptionally easy to use and incredibly useful if you're thinking about ditching your cable provider.
When you're viewing a TV show in Modern Feed, you have options to jump back or go to other shows right in the tool bar that pops down. It's like channel surfing, minus the TV. (click to enlarge)
(Credit: CNET Networks)
The New York Times is reporting that HBO is launching its own online distribution service for a portion of its content both past and present. Starting this week, lucky residents of Green Bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin will be the first to get dibs on the new software application that can be set up to download and stack episodes old and new that can be watched on their PCs. Cable provider Time Warner (the same folks working on the lovely bandwidth metering down in Texas) is sending out the application on an CD to current HBO subscribers "soon."
Already there are a few caveats to using the fancy new software. For one, the application is limited to Windows machines, and unlike standard network television channels, Internet users can't access the programming without being an HBO subscriber--a system that's likely to be checked with activation servers. The downloaded content is also given a self-expiration date of one month, regardless of whether or not it's been watched. In many ways it's similar to the BBC's efforts with the iPlayer project, both in helping people catch up on old episodes, and attempting to curb piracy with easy access.
The Times notes competitor Showtime's foray into digital distribution that started with iTunes back in 2006. Showtime currently has just over a dozen shows on iTunes and Amazon's Unbox service at $2 a pop, although unlike HBO's standalone downloading media player, both services are on a purchase model that allow users to repeatedly watch episodes on their computers, TVs, and in the case of iTunes--iPods and iPhones.
HBO Subscribers are getting a slightly better end of the deal than their Showtime counterparts as long as they're willing to watch the shows on their PCs and forgo bringing the programming with them on portable devices. I'm still interested to see how much legacy programming HBO intends to offer in its first few months, as two of the key reasons for piracy are people simply not wanting to buy DVDs or missing the episode within its initial TV window. Isn't this what they created on-demand programming for in the first place?
College football is back, and so is fall television. If you're looking to pick up some free TV shows (legally), the Internet is your friend and is a great place to go for digital versions of TV shows, sans a TV or the need for a VCR or DVR to watch shows when you want to. Note that several of these sites are walking a fine line of what's legal and what's not, which was outlined in yesterday's post about legal suicide for start-ups. We don't condone piracy or encourage it; this guide is for entertainment purposes only.
Free (and paid-for) downloads:
iTunes. iTunes is worth mentioning here because you can often get the first and last episode of any show for free. You can then put it on your iPod, iPhone, or watch it full-screen on your computer. While the iTunes Store is now lacking shows like The Office, because of NBC pulling out of its renewal deal, you can still find shows from ABC, CBS, and Fox--which incidentally is offering free pilots of all of their series, which you can find here (link opens up in iTunes).
Editor's Pick: Kitchen Nightmares--it's like Dinner Impossible, but with more volatility and endive.
Amazon Unbox. While we may not have had the best experience using this service in the past, if you're looking for legal digital copies of NBC's newest shows, you're stuck with Unbox until Hulu launches next month. Like the iTunes Store, you'll find all the big players here, although keep in mind that you can't watch these shows on any portable media players, which makes the $1.99 price tag a little harder to swallow.
Editor's Pick: MythBusters
Joost. There is an absolute ton of content on Joost, including entire seasons of the original Transformers from the 80s. The only catch? You've gotta download and install the client, and get a private beta token, which these days is about as easy to get as it was to get a Gmail invite a few years back.
Click the "read more" link below to continue reading, and find out about free, streaming options.
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(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Tired of searching YouTube for clips of TV shows, only to find it barren of your favorite show? Well, if it's a Viacom program you're out of luck anyway, but for most everything else, search tool maker Blinkx rolled out a new service yesterday called Blinkx Remote, a search engine for full-length TV shows. Blinkx sorts through clips and full-length programs, providing direct links to off-site sources where you can watch the entire episode.
In the case of CBS' Jericho, Blinkx sent me off to CBS' Innertube service, where I had to install a Real Player plug-in to get the video to work. Alternately, if I knew the episode I wanted, I was able to pull up Flash versions at other video providers like Dailymotion and MySpace Videos. For other popular shows like Heroes and The Office, I was simply redirected to NBC's Rewind service.
One big thing missing with Blinkx Remote is an easy way to find older programs. For many of the popular shows, you're lucky enough to simply visit the network's Web site. Where search engines like this come in handy is for shows that fall out of syndication like Seinfeld, Friends, and Cheers. For those, you're better off exercising patience and using Netflix.
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