I get asked from time to time which satellite, cable, DVD rental, digital download or online viewing services I use, and how do I “watch” or “listen” to those. To try and give a comprehensive answer to this question, I’m going to write a periodic series called “My Media”. In these articles I’m going to try and lay out how I get my media, how I processes it, and how I (and my family) consume it.

Now this may seem like a lame topic for some people, but media is changing. It has been over a decade sense I watched TV based on a broadcast schedule. In fact I even remember the last TV show that I arranged my time around to watch. It was a show on TNT called “Witch Blade”. (A show who’s comic book forerunner had tries back to a fellow Crossvileian, Michael Turner.) Media is now “on demand” and omnipresent. We watch video on small screens and large screens, listen to music from devices that can hold entire audio genres at ounce, and read books from wireless connected pads. There is such a great divide between the way I watch video and the way my parents watch video and I look at my daughter and wonder just how different her experience with entertainmnt and information will be from my own.

I brag that I’ve not watched “TV” in years, though I do have the lighted box commonly referred to as ” the television”. I also have subscriptions to various providers of video and audio. But the way I’ve seen people watch “tv” is not the way I watch TV. I’m proud to say I’ve never watched a reality TV show, unless you count Formula 1 racing and UT football, and those are less like reality shows than soap operas.

While I don’t think there is a “right” way to take in media, I know there are many, many, “wrong” ways to do it. This is just the way I do it, and some thought about what I feel are good ideals and bad ideals in the changing media state.

Legality.. I going to come right out and say that some of the things I’m going to write about here are legal gray areas. While I’m not going to give a step by step “how to” on violating copyright law, I don’t what to misrepresent myself as someone who is puritanical on the issue of copyright. In those places where copyright holders have provided me with a method that conforms to the way I wish to view my media, then I have no problem abiding by their framework. However when a copyright holder does not provide a method that conforms to the way I wish to view my media, then I feel I have every right to circumvent their framework so as to conform to my needs. As far as compensation for copyrighted works, I make every effort to abide by the sprit if not the rule of the controlling licensing agreements. I understand that the production of good media requires money. However, I also know that as a savvy consumer, I find the best ways to obtain my media. I will say that my conscience is not troubled one bit and I sleep very well at night. So that means I’m ether on the right moral side of the issue or I’m a sociopath.

Sometimes in my line of work, I find it necessary to hunt down images.

Searching for an “image” is somewhat of a dark art. While there have been many advances over the years, computer do a horrible job at recognizing the contents of a image. One only has to look at the error rate in most OCR software to see that even on something as plan text, machines have trouble distinguishing between “$” and “S” or “l” and “I”. So asking a computer to find me a picture of a woman with black hair standing at the western face of the Siegessäule in Berlin is a bit of a stretch.

For some time Google has had image searching system, but has worked primary by guessing the content of an image based on the context clues of the page on which that image sits. The search can be refined a bit by specifying size and overall color composition, but in the end I’m still left sifting through dozens if not hundreds of images looking for something that may or may not exist hoping that someone both has posted the desired image and described it contents in minute detail.

Today was such a day in which I was on a bug hunt for an image. I had a small thumbnail of an image, but needed to confirm details within that image which had been lost when the image was shank. I spent some time on Google, but could only find other thumbnails of this same image. One of the things about the internet is that is constantly copies itself. If information is posted, it will be copied, stored, and republished elsewhere. This is one of the great strength of both the technical and social elements the network. (and the biggest reason why current copyright laws don’t work in the digital word). In my case, the thumbnail of the image I was after could be found in Google images, but the full-size version was proving more difficult to locate.

After some time I decided to check Microsoft’s Bing image search. To my astonishment, using the same search terms as I did with Google, the full size image I was looking for was the third choice on Bing Image search. No only did I find the image I as looking for, but I also found several related full size images that were part of the same set that I did not know even existed.

While this incident has not persuaded me to move from Google to Bing for my search needs, I do feel more like Bing is becoming a legitimate competitor to Google. Microsoft has publicly stated that they will destroy all traffic records after six months, and this bodes well for my need for privacy. I also feel better knowing that Google is standing up to China’s draconian censorship policies. Maybe the worm has turned.

While the people here at TCG are great conversationalists, sometimes a problem with technology just can’t be handled over the phone. When that happens, it’s best for one of our techs to go “hands on” with the afflicted system. In the past this involved a trip onsite to visit a client, or having the client bring things to us.

Back 15 years ago, I would spend 30 minuets driving to and from a location to preform a 5 minute “fix” for a problem. To overcome this discrepancy of billable time my employers of the past would often institute bizarre fees such as “Service call charge”, “one way travel bill”, or bill at a high rate for work done on site. When I started TCG I wanted to eliminated this confusion, and not penalize a client just because I was clever enough to fix their issue in 5 minutes. This is one of the reasons we never bill for things that take less than 10 minutes to fix.

However, time is the most valuable of all resources, for both our clients and our techs. As much I enjoy my clients company, sometimes the best use of everyones time is for me to go “hands on” with technology without the need for scheduling an onsite visit and travel time. This is were the gem of IT Consulting comes in, Remote Access. Remote Access gives the ability for a tech to take “remote control” over a system, and use it as if he or she was siting at the desk.

This is not new, in fact remote access features have been a core part of the Windows Operating system for almost 10 years. Even here at TCG we have a collection of remote access methods, mainly centering about the use of Windows RDP, Open Source VNC, and Mac Screen Sharing. The problem is however that there is not a unified and simple way for any of these methods to transit the complex world of Internet security and firewalls. The end result is that even with our own remote access methods we spend more time maintaing the access paths (port forwarding, routing, etc) than we ever do proving support.

Starting late last year, I started a research project to find the “best” method to create a system that would allow us at TCG to best serve our clients via remote access. The fruits of that research have lead a company called LogMeIn.

There are several commercial and free remote access software packages, such PC Anywhere, RealVNC, Windows Remote Desktop, and MAc Screen Share. The problem with a software package is that it requires that we here at TCG maintain a “path” into whatever system needs to be remotely accessed. This gets even more complicated when realized that most computer no longer connect directly to the internet, but rather are behind NAT routers and firewalls. Several computers within a single office all share a common “gateway” to the internet, and transitioning this gateway to access a single system within that network is a non-trivial task. Also, there was no real uniformity between Macs and PCs. Both had native remote access system, but of course they are not compatible. VNC does work on both, but it’s not a totally secure method. Because of all of this, we ruled out using a “software only” solution.

The other possible solution was a “hosted” remote access system. The advantage of a hosted system is that it is much easier for client and tech to link up. Both sides report to a common third party computer that handles the messy technical details of the connection. This means that accessing any number of computers behind an office NAT router is no longer a problem. There are several high profile companies that offer this hosted remote access service, they include Webex, GoToMyPc, and LogMeIn. The down side of these hosted remote access services is the cost and the dependancy on a third party companies which may or may not be around in the future.

Of all the services I looked at, I liked LogMeIn. I felt like they offered the best overall package of features for the price. But what really tipped the scales was they apparent embrace of new technologies. They no only offer remote support for Mac and PC, but also Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Symbin Phones. They also have an iPhone app that will allow me to take a quick look at a clients machine directly from my iphone.

The correct software for LogMeIn can be downloaded from the software section and instructions for installation and use can be obtained by contacting us at TCG.