David Brake's blog
Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

Archive forNovember 24th, 2008 | back to home

24 November 2008
Just for the sake of balance – sometimes technology works better than expected too
Filed under:Broadband content,Broadband infrastructure,Digital TV,Personal,Positive uses of technology at11:39 pm

I’m busy downloading the demo of Red Alert 3 to celebrate making progress on my thesis and I thought I would try out BBC iPlayer’s streaming video option to watch Survivors at “high definition”. To my surprise the BBC video is quite close to download quality even while I’m downloading the demo at 400Kbps! I was dismissive of the likelihood that people would bother watching BBC TV live on iPlayer but at this quality it would be quite bearable.

And I’m old enough to remember waiting for plain text web pages to load in Mosaic…

PS I am enjoying Survivors so far even though it is hardly sophisticated entertainment…

Why being single in New York City is better than being married in Podunk
Filed under:Interesting facts at9:47 pm

Is Urban Loneliness a Myth?

This New York Magazine article takes a long time to say a little but it’s an entertaining read and features one of my favorite Internet researchers Keith Hampton, so it’s worth a look. Basically, it’s better not to live with someone than to live with someone you don’t love – friends can substitute for family in keeping you happy and healthy, big city life is more sociable than small town life because there are other people like you to hang out with and the Internet is very handy for similar reasons. Hurray for weak ties!

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