Earlier this week, Nick Currie (aka Momus) announced that he will be ending his weblog in February of 2010. Now, I usually think of Nick as being right on the bleeding edge of a good bit of digital culture, and I’m wondering now if his announcement isn’t the culmination of a a kind of sea change in the blogging world – indeed, blogging as a major creative activity seems to be winding down these days.

I truly think that Click Opera is the best blog on the internet. To me it exemplifies all the amazing things a great blog should aspire to be: excellent daily content that covers both a wide range of personal and public topics related to the author’s interests mixed with interesting graphic design, photography, and video, as well as a kind of digital hub to find other excellent related sites of interest, as well as a digital space for readers to comment and engage the author in discussion about his work (whew!). Really, there aren’t many places on the internet where you can get that kind of specific depth and engaging breadth all in one place. However, Momus does give some good reasons for leaving blogging behind:

Because the LiveJournal platform I’m using is being wound down (it has a skeleton staff of 8 right now, I’m told). Because there’s a kind of tumbleweed feel to my Friends List these days, as people migrate to Twitter (and “ship” their inconsequential tweets back to the old haunt as if to place a big “Nothing to see here folks!” sign over both locations) or Facebook. Because I don’t feel that blogging either can or should be as big a part of the next decade as it has been of this one. Because I wonder what would happen if I put the energy I pour daily into this blog (and I’ve established a great working routine!) into something like a book, or something else. Because I think it’s good to force yourself to change, just for the sake of change. Because I don’t want to be a fifty year old man whose life revolves around a blog.

I’m most sympathetic to his points about the rise of Twitter and Facebook, and also that blogging won’t be “as big a part of the next decade as it has been of this one.” I think that’s probably true. Which is not to say that I think blogging will go away. It most definitely won’t, but I do think most blogs will continue to evolve, which to me means either they will cease or step their game up to a whole different level.

What do I mean by that? People who’ve been blogging for some time are now familiar with the medium. They know what can be done well and what fairs poorly. Blogging has now or is rapidly becoming much less of a fad than it was three years ago. I think that the folks who stick around will probably only become better writers and their control of the medium will only continue to get better. People like Momus have paved the way and have shown what a great blog can and should be. Now, I think their will be other dedicated writers who will blaze down that same trail and continue to push the medium into new territory. But the pressing question for me is, “How/Will I be able to find them?”

I’ve had a couple of conversations recently with friends about how all the awesome stuff I check out on the internet these days is at least two to three years old. I don’t feel like there is a a lot of great new content out there, even though the web itself has come along way in those intervening years.

When I look at the number of my friends who blog, the number has dropped from a high of about 12 in around 2004 to roughly 3 or 4 who keep their sites updated on at least a monthly basis. However, nearly everyone I know including some people’s grandparents are on Facebook or Twitter.

My google reader is littered with basically dead RSS feeds that once piped in some really good content from some really talented writers. How many great livejournals did I once read that now no longer exist?

Blogging has in some ways become more about celebrity: think dooce’s book deals and jason kottke being spotlighted in the New York Times. Some of The Great Blogs have become almost corporate in their scope of influence – they exert a kind of “normalizing” effect on the smaller blogs, either killing them off or reigning them in.

But the blog world will continue to turn. There are many bright spots: academic blogging is better than it’s ever been. Specialized music blogs continue to thrive. And then there are perhaps my favorites, the undead blogs – those unwieldy sites that have been killed by their authors only to rise again with perhaps a new color scheme or different url to feast on the collective intellect once more.

Alas, even my own humble home here on the web continues on in a kind of undead, zombie state. My original pact with Dave (and indeed the original scope of this particular incarnation of dcomeaux.com) was to document our college years. Document we did, and as soon as I was out of school, writing here took on a strange, sometimes unsettling new dimension. After all, our collegiate journeys began together but ended rather separately, so I wasn’t surprised that there was a bit of strangeness in the intervening time. But for me, there is some sense that this blog did actually die (in the sense that it’s original purpose was fulfilled) about two years ago, and yet somehow it carries on.

At first I found all this a bit unsettling, but now I find it somehow reassuring and a little amusing – it’s odd to be writing a zombie version of yourself!

Perhaps what we really need is a re-think of why we are blogging and what we are blogging for. I think Momus’ decision to move on signals (at least for me) a transition point in the still very early development of the blogging medium. Why blog in 2010? I’m looking forward to coming up with some very good answers to that challenge in the coming months.

At the behest of my sister, you can now follow my reading habits at my Goodread’s Profile. I doubt I’ll even attempt to add my already-read back catalog, so this will be more like a ‘what I’m reading/have read in 2009′ kinda thing.

As a side note, I can’t help feeling that my expanding online presence is sort of strange, especially to my non-internet self. All this self-reflexiveness and meta-tracking of one’s habits – it’s kinda creepy. But I try to make it a point to embrace the new, even if I am sort of weirded out by it.

As most readers of this blog probably know, Apple has recently introduced a movie rental service through their popular iTunes music management software.  I’ve tried out a few rentals on the new service and basically, I think it works great.  Here is my two cents:

Movies, Movies, Movies

Although I don’t have a Netflix account of my own, I did live with a person (thanks Ben!) for more than a year who did.  My sister also uses Netflix and I have a couple of friends who use and have shared their Blockbuster’s rental service.  I’ve also used inDemand cable movie rentals and some permutation of premium satellite/DirectTV/ultra cable during my college years.  In fact, when I think about it, now really is a great time to love and watch movies.  I have not used Amazon’s Unbox rental service, which I think is really the only 2.0 type rental service that I have no experience with.   Oh yes, and I’ve been around Tivo/DVR’s.  Briefly, anyway.

So before I get to the Apple experience, I’ll run down my thoughts on all the other services as a kind of standard for our comparison.

Ye Olde Movie Store

- Well, it doesn’t get much more basic than the brick and mortar video establishment.  Although it might seem wildly outdated at this point, there are still a lot of things to like about going to the video store:

1. You get to go travel somewhere (this can also count against the store, see list two below)
2.  Video stores almost always have a clerk who is cool/knows a lot about movies/is worth having a conversation with
3. Independent rental stores (yes, they do still exist), often have a kind of hermeneutic aura, sort of a temple to film if you will
4. Rental stores are the geographic location where Hollywood’s Law manifests itself.  (Hollywood’s Law states that if a person goes to rent a movie in their home town at a rental store after 6 pm, said individual will encounter someone they know.  really, it’s true)
5. You can get the movie you want fairly quickly (30 min or less, factoring driving time in my town).
6. Some stores have an excellent specialty selection (usually not the chains).
7. High Def  Blue Ray formats.  Some places still carry ancient VHF too!

Things you may not like about the video store:

1. You have to leave the house
2. You have to talk to a clerk
3. Selection at chains is variable at best
4. You may be subject to Hollywood’s Law
5. Adding on gas and your time, going to the store is probably less cost effective than other possible options.
6. You probably will need to ‘become a member’.  Sigh.
7. Late Fees!

DVD’s to your house service (Netflix, Blockbuster, etc.)

- Pros:

1. Largest Selection of Films.  Period.
2. Pretty quick turn-over rate (1 Day)
3. You get to travel, but not really very far (well depends on your mailbox I guess).
4. Subscription rates are pretty reasonable, esp. for those who watch lots of movies.  The more you watch, the better these plans are, I think.
5. You get to watch the movie as many times as you want for pretty much as long as  you want.
6. Support for High Def Blue Ray quality discs.

- Cons:

1. You have to subscribe.  (No one time rental for you!)
2. You probably should have the following already: a personal computer, an internet connection, a stable mailing address.
3. Not really as quick as going to the movie store, but then again, you don’t have to get out and drive either.
4. There’s a kind of procrastination factor – I’ve noticed this with every single Netflix subscriber I have known: nobody really uses their subscription to its maximum potential (see point 4 above).   Lots of folks tend to hold movies for way too long thus kind of negating the money they might be ‘saving’ by really maxing out the service.

inDemand Cable Rentals

- Pros:

1. Nice selection of new releases
2. Virtually no wait/a very minimal wait  to watch the film
3. No subscriptions, no membership.
4. No traveling (unless it is to the couch!)

- Cons:

1. you need a cable provider
2. 24 -hour  movie expiration
3. Ultra small  selection outside Hollywood new releases
4.  An extra debit tacked on to your cable bill
5. No Blue Ray support

Premium Cable/Satellite + Tivo/DRV

- Pros

1. Pretty solid selection of films, even better if your service provider carries Independent Film channels and the like.
2. There is a wait time to watch, but you can just program your recorder and go do something else.
3. Pre-filtered content can provide you with some serendipity – a good way to discover new films (although online rental services can substitute for this with recommendations based on what you have already watched, this will tend to push you in directions you already go in, not provide you with something that you ‘didn’t know you liked’)
4. Once again, you need cable plus either a Tivo subscription or a one-time DVR purchase.
5. You can watch things a million times.
6. No travel required.

- Cons

1. You can’t always get what you want in terms of selection (obscure forties foreign films anyone?)
2. Not really ‘on demand’
3. Not really geared towards non-subscribers or one-time users
4. As far as I know, no Blue-Ray like support.

How does Apple Rentals Stack Up

As is obvious, each movie service offers a different set of pros and cons that provide the end user with a subtly different experience.  In it’s current incarnation, I think Apple rentals slots somewhere between cable’s inDemand and Netflix-esque services in terms of what it provides and how it provides it.

The Apple service puts a premium on speed and accessibility, in a manner that is similar to inDemand.   Assuming you have a modern internet connection, a fairly recent (non-Linux) OS, and a checking account, you can rent a movie on this service.  No car, TV, DVD player, optical drive required.  Also, no subscriptions necessary.

My own experience with the rentals was smooth as silk.  I already use iTunes as my music management software on my personal mac and on my family’s home PCs.  Renting a movie was as easy as logging into my account, querying up a title, and pressing the ‘rent’ icon.

I was very skeptical as to how fast I could begin watching my rental, but suprisingly, as per Mr. Jobs at Macworld, I started watching within a minute of downloading the film.

Quality, as far as I could tell, was excellent.  The visual quality seemed comparable to an ordinary DVD, and the movie did not skip or lag or buffer  one single time.  There was a bit of flutter during one section of the film that I was a little disappointed with.  Perhaps this has something to do with the encoding process?  Now, granted I was using a rather new 2GHz  laptop (and I don’t think things would run as smoothly on my now obsolete 800mhz G4 desktop), but I think it’s only fair to point out that online rental services are really geared towards the latest in computer hardware.  Consider yourself warned.

To make a direct comparison, my sister and I reviewed her use of Netflix’s online rental watching service.  Head-to-head on the same machine, Apple won hands down, and what killed Netflix for me were three crucial factors:

1. Netflix’s online rent-and-watch service is windows only.  Strike one.
2. The actual picture quality was far below an ordinary DVD.  Think Youtube.  Buffering and lagging all over the place.  Strike Two.
3.  You must use INTERNET EXPLORER to watch the movie!  WTF!?   Welcome to 1999.  Strike three.

Although everyone is complaining about it, I don’t really have a problem with the 24-hour rental thing.  48 hours would be better, but 24 really isn’t that bad.  If I want to watch a movie a hundred times, I’ll buy it.  I have never watched a rented movie more than twice in my life before, and I don’t expect my viewing habits to suddenly change now.  Your mileage may vary.

In terms of selection, well, Apple’s sucks right now.  However, this is the place where I can see this service really improving – in fact, I think that Apple’s back catalog with this service will be the deal-breaker for whether I actually use this service frequently in the future.  If they stock a huge library, I expect I’ll be renting movies  – if not, I may pop in for a sporadic new release, but I’m sure that will be pretty rare, based on my previous  renting habits.

To Summarize

If you have a fast internet connection, a computer less than two years old, and don’t mind the small selection, then Apple rentals may  be for you.  Here’s the summary, as I see it.

- Pros:

1. No traveling, no subscription, no physical media required.
2. No waiting, pretty much instant rent and watch.  As fast or faster than cable inDemand.
3. No additional cable fee or subscription bill, straight out of checking just like a rental at the store.
4. Can be used as a one-time service

- Cons:

1. Limited rental selection
2. 24 hour watch period
3. best experienced with recent internet/computer hardware – computer and internet connections are a requirement.
4. No High Def or Blue Ray support
5. Not as cost-effective as a maxed-out Netflix account.

All in all, I think the actual Apple ‘online rental’ process is the best of the current breed of online services.  However, if you watch more than 5 films a month, have a killer Blu-Ray/Flatscreen/Home Theater set-up, or just need to see the latest Hungarian Nu-Wave film, I would not cancel your Netflix subscription just yet.

Luxury in the 21st century is going depend less on how much you are able to buy and more about how much you are able to appreciate: the scent of blossoms, the dappled light from a canopy of trees, etc. Cultivate rather than collect. Time rather than money. Slow rather than fast. One’s status will depend upon how much one can do with very little. Imagination, wit and inventiveness are the new currency. Building a beautiful life and sharing one’s breakthroughs with others will be the goal: moth eclosion parties, gardening parties, fragrance parties, etc.Long live the new luxury!

via the inspired musings of Lord Whimsy, a blogging favorite of mine for quite some time now.

I agree completely with this sentiment – after all, one can have all the nice things, experiences, and rewards of life, but if the ability to appreciate and reflect on all this beauty is missing, well what is the point of it all then?

if you are looking for some stuff to read on your holiday downtime, check out my shared google reader items. the most recent stuff is posted last because i just went down my starred list and tagged stuff so some posts may be old news. anyway, i thought that since i haven’t been posting much, the least i can do for now is share some what i am reading on the internets – lots of good content in there for those interested.

oh yeah, and i am experimenting with twitter.