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Sweet Streams Are Made.. (7/13/99)
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QuickTime 4 has been out for a while, now, and Apple recently announced that it's been downloaded more than eight million times-- "underscoring the growing popularity of QuickTime as a streaming media format." Well, yeah, except that as far as we can tell, there are still very few web sites actually using QuickTime to netcast their live content. But it's unrealistic for us or anyone else to expect that well-established sites who paid good money for a RealVideo server are going to chuck it out the window just because there's another option now, even if that new option does seem to yield a better viewing experience for the average end-viewer. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
So we'll just have to wait for new sites to spring up with live video content to offer, who will have the choice of either paying Real's "server tax" or using Apple's free and open source QuickTime Streaming Server. Until then, we can entertain ourselves with the wealth of entertainment available via live QuickTime Streaming from Apple's own site, like Bloomberg News. Or, uh, BBC World. Or the Weather Channel. Hmm, most of this stuff is infotainment at best, and actually informative at worst-- not exactly the mind-numbing brain-candy entertainment we were hoping for. Sure, there's HBO, but that's usually just trailers for real HBO events, and not the channel itself. And Fox Sports might be entertaining if you're into that sort of thing, but we're not.
Fear not! There's a brief respite from the deluge of live educational, financial, and atmospheric data Wednesday night after Apple posts its quarterly financial results. (By the way, you did enter the Beat the Analysts contest, right? It's open until 2 PM EDT on Wednesday.) Tune in via QuickTime 4 at 8PM EDT and catch a live performance by the Eurythmics, reunited for their upcoming PeaceTour, which aims to raise funds for Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Tune in, rock out, and consider making a contribution to a couple of worthy causes. The financial news can wait.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 7/13/99 episode: July 13, 1999: It's still sort of unclear just what exactly this Apple/Swatch email watch does, but we want one anyway. Meanwhile, Dartmouth's computer science department accepts a slew of NT workstations donated by Microsoft, and the Eurythmics get set to rock the web via the magic of QuickTime 4...
Other scenes from that episode: 1657: Watch For More (7/13/99) So this email watch thing that everyone's buzzing about-- you know, the one that Swatch is working on, which will apparently be available in an Apple-styled Mac-compatible version-- we thought we had it all figured out... 1658: Alas, Poor Dartmouth (7/13/99) We've all heard plenty of stories about higher education institutions who were formerly huge Mac supporters starting to lean towards the Windows side of the world in recent years. Apple maintains that its educational market share is either holding steady or increasing, but whether or not that's technically true, there's something very damaging from a morale standpoint when a Mac campus suddenly goes Windows...
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