Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

I signed up for Joost, formerly know as the Venice Project, beta which is building a P2P (Peer-to-Peer) TV service, more than a month ago and forgot about it. 

Today, I got my invite to the participate in the beta,  and I wanted to share my first thoughts on the platform/product.

Joost works like your cable tv box with a couple of differences, it doesn’t have a channel guide but a search box and channels are really just videos that you can watch. The quality of the few shows that I watched, a music video and diving documentary was impressive, it’s wasn’t HD quality but better than standard defintion cable.

The line is still limited and you are not going to find 24, The Office or Survivor but it did have some current music videos and had 3 scuba diving shows.

The product is a P2P app, so it doesn’t work behind my corporate firewall, so I won’t be taking any TV breaks at work. Regardless, this should send some shockwaves to the TV industry as the future is here and it’s called “Internet TV“

I made this video about 4 years ago and put it on YouTube about a year ago. It’s from a dive trip to Florida and a couple of the caves that we dove in over that short weekend.

Pretty cool. Microsoft came out with a new desktop blog writing application that can connect to now only it’s own Windows Live Spaces but most of the custom blog platforms out there, including my favorite: WordPress.

It’s called Windows Live Writer, it’s free and available here.

It’s very MS Word like in it’s operation, true WYSIWYG authoring, but light-weight enough to make edits quick and easy. I also like the built in spell check and the familiar format options that we all know and love.

I’m going to play around with this one for a while, in fact I am writing this article with it, and while it won’t replace the portability of using the Wordpress web interface, it does give you options.

I got a Blackberry Pearl to replace my Blackberry 8700c. I like the fact that it’s smaller, has a camera with a flash and plays mp3s and videos. In addition, it a good phone, has amazing battery life, has bluetooth and looks good oh yeah and does email/calendar really really well, because of course it’s a Blackberry.

It has Suretype, a software replacement for a full keyboard which uses prediction software and a dictionary to guess which word you are trying to enter. It works very well, not as well as a full keyboard, but I’m not writing novels on this thing, usually just short messages. I actually don’t mind it now, it took a little while to get used to but I quickly over came any obstacles in my acceptance.

The camera on it is ok, not great but it’s good for stupid little quick pictures of your co-worker doing something funny or a pet doing something cute. It also plays mp3s and some videos. While it’s nothing to challenge an Ipod or Zune but it’s pretty good for a person who doesn’t already have an mp3 player. The upgradeable internal memory will take up to a 2 GB in the MicroSD format. The device also functions as a thumb drive, so you can load any document that you’d like onto it.

So far, I like it and while the media playback won’t replace my Ipod, the email and phone functions make this my current favorite.

About 4 years ago while on a snowboarding trip in Mammoth, I had an moment of clarity and realized that I was not longer in the best shape of my life. I was tired after only a couple of hours of snowboarding. On the way down, I made a promise to myself that I would change all that and really get in shape.

I started going to the gym and reading magazines, books, videos, etc and after a month, the results were none except for giving myself plantar fasciitis, aka “Runners Heel”.

At that time, I decided that I need to get some professional help, so I found a personal trainer. So 3 times a week before work, he kicked my ass into shape. I dropped my body fat to around 10% and was generally looking good and I kept this up for almost two years.

The downside, it was as expensive. So I dropped my personal trainer and started doing it myself.

Two years later, I weight 196 lbs, 30 more pounds than I’ve EVER weighted in my life. I let myself slide and was starting to get back -pain, not dealing with stress well and generally disgusted with my personal level of fitness.

So on New Year’s Eve, I get a call from my old trainer, Markshane; who taking a book out of Marketing 101 was calling old clients and seeing if they wanted to come back. I jumped at the idea, and signed back up with Shape Up Studio after he showed me my old photos and I was shocked at my former appearance.

This time, it’s worth the expense, my body is way more important than a car or newest clothes or gadgets.

I’m going to chronicle my progress on the site.