MLB.tv’s digital broadcast service is really, really good.
From Tokyo, Japan, I was able to use a friend’s account to login to the service, and within a minute I was watching an HD live broadcast of Yu Darvish’s debut start for the Texas Rangers.
After the rough first inning, my work took me away from my desk, but not to worry, because MLB.tv’s subscription service extends to any and all screens you might own. I slipped my iPad out of my bag, downloaded the app, and again, in less time than a commercial break, I was watching live baseball, in HD, on my iPad, on the other side of the world.
Thank you Major League Baseball for getting your act together, mastering the digital age and making your amazing product available in real time, anywhere in the world.
This folks, is new media done way right. All you other sports leagues with aspirations of global domination take note. Baseball, the game of tradition, Babe Ruth, ivy, peanuts and crackerjacks, is in a new media class of it’s own.
TweetWith Instagram launching for Android, the popular photo-sharing app will now be flooded with photos from regular people.
When Instagram was exclusively on iOS, it was the privileged domain of artists only. It’s stream showed non-stop inspirational images that stirred our collective soul. We got a window into modern life. We got careful studies of clouds against stunning rainbow gradient sunsets.
There is no telling what kind of images mere commoners will upload. There is effectively no quality control now that non-artists have been granted access to the revolutionary app.
Were Steve Jobs still with us, I’m certain he would have taken measures to keep Instagram an iPhone exclusive. He understood the particular madness and sensitivities of the artist.
Instagram is not just an application, it is a community. It was a community. And every community comes with its own set of standards. Its own tastes.
Now, sadly, it has been relegated to a mere service. It’s like a calculator now. The Instagram developers have sold out and in the process exposed their taste, or lack thereof. Android users don’t try to capture their images with any degree of artistry. They capture their images factually. Robotically, just like the tiny green robot that symbolizes their brand.
‘Here is what I am eating.’
‘Here is what I am looking at.’
‘This is my place of work.’
Efficient. Sterile. Without personality.
Instagram was once a haven a wit, inside jokes and lessons in cinematography. Instagram, when it was on iOS exclusively, was a posh mobile art gallery. It was a virtual gallery that fit in our pockets and we were free to contribute to its walls when the muse descended upon us.
Now Instagram will turn into Facebook. Mark my words. The magic is over. It will become a factual stream filled with literal, soulless images, simply taken with little thought, simply to pass time. Images not captured to inspire or move.
Instagram just had one million users join in the past 24 hours that will turn the tides and tendencies of this once proud community into a stream of visual status updates.
It will become TwitPic 2.0/ It will be a pure visual Timeline.
It’s fine for a service like that to exist. In fact many do. It’s just said to see a once proud artist colony like Instagram open the floodgates to the wider internet.
Cue the cat photos. Ready the memes.
It’s only been 24 hours, but my soul has already been crushed by the army of one million Androids. I already pine for the once walled garden of the iOS only Instagram.
TweetJetpack Joyride for the iPhone is a highly addictive side scrolling game. It features an intuitive one-touch playstyle with enjoyable game physics. You control the character Barry through a crazy secret laboratory of evil scientists and randomly scattered lethal laser beams. The object of the game is to travel the most distance possible.
The addictive part of the game comes from the genius ‘mini-missions.’ The gameplay is intuitive and fun enough, but the replay value lies in the ever changing mini missions. Missions such as ‘travel 500 meters without touching the ground’ or ‘collect 3 bonus tokens’ or ‘reach 2000 meters total,’ make for spontaneous challenges that add a depth of gameplay. You always have three missions to complete, and once you complete one, it is instantly replaced with a new one. This unexpectedness and constant challenge make you always want to ‘play just one more game.’
Oyl Spill Rating: 10 out of 10
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