A Beta TV called Joost

Finally received an invite to participate in a little Joost up TV. Subsequently I've been watching a beta Joost. This thing is not only the future of TV but the future of Entertainment. I didn't get the invite from Joost though, I was referred using e-beg. Simliar to eBay except you wander forums begging for an invite and the more creative you are with your posting the better chance of receiving an invite via email which is kind of like a wormhole to the future in a referral link. The future of TV that is.

Enjoy this promotional video for Joost to get your tongues wagging and just hope that you have a techy friend in the know to send an invite your way. Otherwise you can use e-beg on a forum. I went to this one: Joost Forums and posted this poem:

I am thirsty for Joost.
I need vitamin TV please.
Certainly a Boost.
Beta than Full Release.

And after somebody sent me an invite I added this:

I just got an invite
But not of this board
I'll leave you to fight
Until you become bored.

Sorry for teasing you with all this but I really think it has loads of promise.



The Best Way to Get a Joost Invite

It's called Google for a reason but that's not relevant right now. What you wanna do is search in Google or I'm not obliged to say but search engine of your choice for a Joost related forum.

Try keywords like these Joost, Joost Invite, Joost Forum, Joost Beta Invite, Joost Invite Community, The Future is Joost and stuff along those lines.

Find one that looks decent and has been active and trawl for invites by putting your email [quenchyourthirst] [at] [joost.com] and if you trust the forum your First and Last name. You can use an alias because you can change your full name after you are registered and have it on your computer.

Or if you are a member of a forum just start a thread in a relevant topic and fish for people.

The other rarer option is that one of your friends has Joost. Which would be a lot easier.



Have a nice time finding an invite. I'll be watching the future on Joost, not the content just the program. First three people to leave an amusing comment will get a Joost Invite emailed to them as I gain them from using the programme. Leave email and First and Last Name.

What's on the Triple J Rotational Now

Listen to the following songs marked with the Entertainment Fiend logo on the Triple J Finetune player on the top right of this site!

Frank Zappa Defending Words circa. 1986

This is a video I came across a couple of years ago but it's always good for repeat viewings. Check it out. It's a long one so you might have to press play, pause it and let it load. 21 minutes long but worth the investment of your time.

Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer

You can check out the below video but it doesn't really do it justice. Head here for a better trailer experience.

Listen to Triple J's Hitlist

I've added a little Triple J hitlist radio widget/gadget in my sidebar. It is a Finetune play list that behaves like a radio. It's the songs that were available on Finetune's database today from the rotation list on Triple J's website. Enjoy! And credit to Triple J for being such a fine radio station.

Well Designed MySpace and other Oxymorons

What does it take to make a nice looking


These days just enter "Design MySpace for Me" into Google and you will come up with a myriad of sites offering the sweetest designs but for the ill educated Web User they will most likely have a "Free Kick Ass Mutha-Truckin MySpace Layouts" Banner on the top right of their page linking to the very reason their MySpace sucks.

There are a few tools around to make your MySpace look sweet enough to bite without having to many of those crappy and annoying "Which past Big Brother contestant's toenails are most like yours?" Gadget which you wouldn't have on there unless you were like a person that you adore or think other people do.

So here is my MySpace Designer School

Images

It's called Photobucket and you probably would have contributed to their server load at some point if you use MySpace or frequent blogs. If you wanna put your own images up there you have to register. Once registered you will be assigned a photo album to put all your images into once uploaded. The editing of size and other properties is limited once you upload your image so best do that beforehand.

Uploading is very straight forward. You just browse and locate the image, preferably JPG or GIF but they do allow for a few other formats depending on your needs.

Once your picture is in you photo album you are going to want to click the yellow box next HTML Tag. This will copy the code ready for you to place it where it is needed.



From here it's just a matter of choosing which section you want to place the image. One of the below sections is a good place to start:

About Me | Who I'd Like To Meet | Interests | Music | Movies | Books | Heroes

The html code which will look something like this:



It's just a matter of changing the URL in the brackets after href and the =

If you want no link on your image delete the code above.

Photos in a bucket.


Videos

It's pretty straightforward with Veoh. Register an account and you are on your way. Videos are on the site as soon as you upload them and they look sweet without all that crappy branding that YouTube does. Just embed your video onto MySpace and change the dimensions to suit which part of your page you are on.

Use the Calculator on your computer to do this.

A better uploading experience than YouTube


Music

If you want to entertain your visitors with a radio station of your own making than Finetune is just for you. Just look in the top right of this page to see it in action. The Finetune playlist was made by selecting songs from a generous song catalogue and they play back for you and the world to hear.

You need to select a minimum of 45 songs for each playlist you create and from there the song selection's the limit. I created a few different lists.

I created a personalised playlist to listen to on my desktop with the new Finetune Desktop Beta as well as in my MySpace music section. You can also listen to it on the Wii if you have one. They have a part of their site dedicated to it. You could probably use it on the Playstation 3 come to think of it.

I also created a Film Scores playlist comprising my favourite film scores which is nice to set the mood when you are having dinner or something.

And than I created a playlist based on my favourite radio station's most played songs on rotation hitlist of the moment.

You gotta be creative and good things will happen.

Tune into yourself today

I hope you were schooled in the finer arts of using other people's ideas and knowledge to make a killer looking MySpace page to show off to all of your friends.

Till next time.

Finetune: The Mixtape Evolved

OK, to get this out I wanted to post it on Digg. But someone already beaten me to the punch with a less than desirable headline. "The Best of SXSW 2007 Playlist".

So this is what was to explain Finetune, one of the greatest new inventions on the internet for social networking and making your Wii into a damn fine bedside, partyside and b-side music player for a while. Plus it is just damn cool and so well designed.

So this is a custom playlist made my some guy that I picked that was on the front page in the playlists section.

Ipod's Shuffle Feature for Free Online
It's pretty much Apple iPod's shuffle feature except you don't have to buy the songs. Probably not much of a change for most of you but nonetheless a little guilty. Shuffle on your compy and Wii and I'm pretty sure a portable device somehow. Anything's possible these days with sites like Lifehacker and the sort.

Send Your Friend's Playlists Without Sending Them The Songs
But you can make a playlist for yourself. Minimum 45 songs than it plays on random. Put it on your Social Network page of choice (It lets you embed wherever it's possible, including this post hopefully) and Hey Presto! You can share your tastes with people you know as well as the whole world.


Wi/i Like/s Listening to Fine Tunes
Another great use is for your Wii. It looks great on your TV and it sounds great if you have a good stereo system. You are probably saying that is what my iPod or mp3 player of choice hooked up to a Hi-Fi system is for. But if you have your Wii connected to the net or probably any device that can connect to the net with sound you can listen to playlists made my friends, family and people from all over the world.

So give it a go and tell your friends. I don't know the benefit of telling people because it will probably just make it slower but it's just such a nifty and handy thing. Better than Pandora and less restrictive than Last.fm as I remember them.

So have fun. The site again is www.finetune.com

If God Doesn't Watch Over Us Who Does?

My 2 Cents: How to Get Free Petrol

This method of getting free petrol is as far as I know legal but I'm sure very annoying for the service station attendants. So that's my 2 cents anyway. Be sure to share and we can (very) slowly put a dent however small into the oil industry's bottom line.

How Do You Compare on Speed Test?

The folks over at SpeedTest have really outdone themselves with their great new. Do yourself a faour and check out how fast the speed of your internet is compared to your fellow countryman as well as the rest of the world. It's great fun to toy around with the new design and vast array of features. See if your line speed matches what you paid for.

I've Got That Digging Feeling

After joining the social bookmark site Digg in September 2006 it suddenly became a lot easier to find cool stuff on the web. Sure you can use Google and search for your chosen topic and you'll be on your way, than YouTube came and finding music videos and in some cases TV shows and Movies were split up into ten parts. This made life inconvenient if you set up a couch in your computer room and got comfortable watching the latest episode of than suddenly you'd have to get off your buttocks and click Part 2 and repeat process 3 through 10. (Now there's QuickList so it doesn't apply as much.)

OK, whoa! Went a bit off topic there. What I'm trying to say is Digg in it's latest rendition has made life a whole lot easier when wanting to catch up with current events, whacky news, humorous videos, the latest celebrity caught on tape doing somthing they will later regret and now podcasts of which Diggnation is unsurprisingly the most popular amongst Digg members.

I've been using it fairly frequently for about a month now and there are some topics that seem to come up more often than others. Apple Inc, Atheism as well as people being PWNED (see Wikipedia, although if you are reading this I'd say you are familiar) are common topics. Which suits me fine because I enjoy Apple's products and would probably change to Mac if I could afford it. But I like the odd play around and until PC games are playable on Mac I will likely not be changing. And atheism is great to hear about, especially Dawkins who pretty much PWNS (see above) the people he debates.

So I decided i would try my hand at scouting the internet for something that might go popular and make the front page of Digg. My first attempt about a month ago didn't go so well. It was a satire of Michael Moore's corporate headquarter confrontation tactics and it's currentlt sitting on 2 diggs which includes my initial Digg submission point. I was quite discouraged.

Than it came to me that you need something either really interesting, something that hasn't been done or something universal. So I scoured YouTube for the comedians of my homeland: John Safran, The Chaser Boys and Shaun Micallef. I found some material from the first two but it had already been submitted to Digg and become quite popular. Well I finally found a clip that might be of interest and hadn't already been submitted before. It was an old Micallef sketch from his great television series.

So here is the result. My submitted Digg article. As of submission it had 175 diggs. Click below to see how many it has now. It feels pretty good to make the front page.

The Unspoken Rules of Holding the Door for someone

And here's the video direct that got me on the front page.

1.5Mb to 8Mb - Australian ADSL Increase

Great news for those that live in parts of Australia enabled with Broadband but unable to get ADSL2+. We will see a speed increase from 1.5Mb to 8Mb. Can't wait for it to happen is all I can say.

In other news, I really wanna see Borat, it's like #138 on the IMDb Top 250, The Departed which is also high up in the 250 and just for laughs Jackass 2.

True HD-TV and Blu-Ray

If you are into the whole next generation of television and DVD services than head over to Samsung Australia for a look at the first Blu-Ray player to come to Australia and a mighty good looking Samsung 40" LCD which can output 1080p whatever that means.

I'm barracking for Blu-ray. Who are you hoping wins the DVD race?

iTV, new iPods and movies for iTunes Store

If you are a fan of those nifty little things called iPods as well as the great user interface that is iTunes store head over to Apple for the "It's Showtime" keynote. Included are many cool announcements and watching it is all part of the fun. You need Quicktime to play it as well.

The two big announcements of the keynote were iTV and the addition of movies to the iTunes store. The movies and television being sold are still very exclusive to the USA store but Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Apple will "hopefully be going international in 2007" so that is a glimmer of hope to say the least. iTunes 7 was also released today so head over to the Apple website to get the latest edition of iTunes. A really cool thing in the latest rendition of iTunes is the ability to retrive cover art for any album you have even if you haven't bought it from the store.

I'm pretty excited about all of this. On Thursday Nintendo will most likely be announcing the launch date, price and launch lineup for it's new console Wii so stay tuned as i will have all that info for you here as I find out about it.

The Simpsons Best of Lists

This entry is for all you diehard Simpsons fans out there and i know there is plenty of you out there. Even if you are not into the latest Simpsons efforts the following lists of the best of The Simpsons are a fun read where you can reminisce on the days The Simpsons ruled the world even if you think they still do. So sit back relax and thank the wonderful people over at IGN for some lists and while you are at it check out the 7 minute exclusive clip of the first seven minutes of Season 18's first episode "The Mook, The Chef, The Wife and His Homer" as well as a short on how they get The Simpsons from sketch to the way we view it.

Top 25 Simpsons Peripheral Characters

Top 25 Simpsons Guest Appearances

17 Seasons, 17 Episodes

The First 7 Minutes of Season 18 plus from Sketch to Perfect

So enjoy. Also if you haven't yet heard of Spore check out this 15 minute video that gives you the lowdown on what it's all about. It's the new game from Will Wright creator of The Sims Series. It is a game of evolution and the customization of whatever you want your species to be. Basically it's endless gameplay for the creative minded person. Anyways you can't understand the scale of this game until you see this demo. It's also from IGN.

Spore Demonstration at Game Convention 2006

That's all for now.

Look What I Stumbled Upon

It would be great to say I stumbled upon the great tool that is StumbleUpon but it didn't happen that way. I found it when I was upgrading my Firefox to the latest beta and I thought I'd update my extensions. StumbleUpon is a toolbar, I know another toolbar but it is worth it believe me. You pick what sort of stuff you want to browse and there are heaps of topics and even if you can't find one you can search for anything. Videos, pictures and Wiki's are also all stumblable. It's a great way of discovering new sites in categories you like.

I've already found some great stuff from it. Here are some examples.

AllSP.com - A place with all the South Park episodes to watch online.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Links - A page with links to Google videos of Penn & Teller episodes.

So give it a go and report back to me when you are having fun stumbling.

Audioslave - Revelations

Being a dedicated fan of Rage Against the Machine and one eyed supporter of microphone fiend Zach de la Rocha it was going to take a long time for me to accept new vocalist Chris Cornell. Audioslave's first two albums went by and I never bought them from the CD store, while not thinking twice with RATM. Don't get me wrong I still loved such great songs as Like a Stone and Show Me How to Live and there are some others as well but 5 September came around and I was browsing the iTunes Music Store at 1am and noticed Revelations was out. Original Fire, their first single from the album was ok so I thought I'd give the full album a try and I haven't regreted it.

I'm not going to go giving it a review for at least a month though because I need to get an appreciation for the music and lyrics. Car stereo play, iPod airtime and the time I'm on the computer listening to it will where I place my judgement. First impressions are wonderful though. So far standouts for me are Revelations, Moth, Until we Fall and Shape of Things to Come. There's also a great live version of Show Me How to Live recorded at the Quartz Festival wherever that is that comes with the iTunes version. But really who can ignore the legendary guitar sounds of Tom Morello. Give it a go if you like alternative rock and want your ears drums to vibrate to a standout sound.

Playing GT4, Looking Forward to GT-HD

Well, the previous post about what's on this week was a bit of a disaster aesthetically. It's just heaps of links and I don't really like looking at it. But because I spent so much time on it I'll leave it up.

Anyways I've been playing heaps of rented Gran Turismo 4 and looking forward to Gran Turismo on the PS3 of which I hope will be cheaper by the time it comes out who knows when. I'll probably eventually get a PS3 when Gran Turismo HD, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 come out. Predictable I know but I like the blockbusters.

That's all today. I've got things to do.

Three Games I Can't Wait For

I've been into playing videogames since I was six and it's just something I haven't grown out of. I still like the occasional gaming experience when something takes my fancy. I like open ended gameplay and detest structure. Some games I like are Rise of Nations, The Sims series, Grand Theft Auto Series and anything by Sid Meier which includes the wonderful Pirates! and Civilization IV.

In this post I will outline three games that I am looking forward to. Two more than the other as I like one of them just because of the guy who is making it as I expect great things.

SPORE Q1 2006

I'm looking forward to this because of the premise of being able to create a species and evolve it over time and through different phases. I saw a demo online of a demonstration at E3 and was blown away. This should provide hours of fun. The latest Spore preview can be seen on IGN.

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV October 16th, 2007

The next game I'm looking forward to has been a favourite of mine since Grand Theft Auto 3. The adventures of Liberty City had me engrossed from start to as far as I could get up to and I'm hoping that GTAIV will bring the same stuff to the table.

SID MEIER'S RAILROADS! October 23, 2006

Looking forward to this both because I enjoy Railroad Simulations and because I think Sid Meier will be able to bring something really special to the table as he has done in games I have played in the past including Pirates! and Civilization IV.

Well there are three games that I really can't wait for. Of course there are some games that I may buy depending on certain circumstances including whether I upgrade my PC and getting a new console etc. Some of those include The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy, Tekken 6, Tony Hawk's Project 8, FIFA 07 and maybe the new Pokemon's whenever they come out.

Stocking Shopper from The Chaser

Just wanted to test my ability to place video on the blog as I am pretty new to this blogging stuff. So far Blogger has provided me with everything I have needed for my blogging and that's great. Enough spruiking. The below video is from The Chaser team, an Australian bunch who were first writers than comedic performers pulling lots of crazy stunts and making humourous clips. Their show airs in Australia and it has developed quite a following on the net as well as their dedicated Australian fanbase. The show can be downloaded in full here and on iTunes. Tell me what you think. For more short clips click here.