TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPICS: BLU-RAY WINS / AD-AWARE / YOUTUBE RESEARCH

Howdy, y'all, and happy new year from deep behind the orange curtain in beautiful Irvine, California, where cake and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of today's post. Thank you for helping us help you help us all.

After taking a much-needed break to study for my first semester in the doctorate program at USC, deal with some family issues back in Alabama [see http://tinyurl.com/28vdmn and http://blog.crispen.org/], and spend WAY too much time playing Bioshock and The Orange Box on my Xbox 360, you fearless bus driver is back! Thank you for your patience during my absence. On with the show...

Over, the high definition DVD format wars are Audience: Everyone

In my "Crispen's Guide to What's New and What's Next" presentation at http://www.netsquirrel.com/powerpoint/, I *strongly* recommended that you stay away from next generation DVD players until the HD DVD/Blu- ray format war is over.

It's over. Blu-ray won.

Last week Warner Bros. announced that they would exclusively support Sony's Blu-ray format, leaving only Paramount, Universal, and Dreamworks aligned with the HD DVD camp. You can read Warner's announcement at http://tinyurl.com/ysuljw

There's more. According to the Financial Times [via Gizmodo], Paramount has

a clause in its contract with the HD DVD camp that would allow it to switch sides in the event of Warner Bros backing Blu-ray, according to people familiar with the situation. [Source: http://tinyurl.com/2lorj6 ]

Without Paramount, Blu-ray now has 70% of Hollywood's next generation DVD market. That's *without* Paramount. And don't forget that Paramount distributes Dreamworks Animations films, making it hard to imagine that Dreamworks won't follow if Paramount abandons HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray.

Folks, it's over. Blu-ray won. The HD DVD camp may not realize it yet, and Universal may drag its feet for a few months before finally throwing in the towel and following 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer, Sony, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. and the rest of the Blu-ray camp, but Blu-ray won.

Long story short: if you're in the market for a next generation DVD player, make sure it can play Blu-ray discs.

It's time to upgrade Ad-Aware Audience: All Windows users who use Ad-Aware

I've been a huge fan of Lavasoft's free Ad-Aware for the past three years and have strongly recommended that you download, install, and use the program frequently. Ad-Aware is a program that scans for, and removes spyware and malware from, your Windows-based computer.

In his most recent Washington Post Security Fix blog entry [see http://tinyurl.com/3y75ul ], Brian Krebs points out something that I forgot to mention earlier: It's time to upgrade from Ad-Aware SE to Ad-Aware 2007. Why? Lavasoft stopped shipping updates for Ad-Aware SE on December 31. Yikes.

Fortunately, the upgrade process is relatively painless. Just download the free Lavasoft Ad-Aware 2007 at http://tinyurl.com/3xsz48, install it, and ... well ... that's it. The installer removes the old version and installs the new version.

That's the good news. The bad news is that if you're still running Windows 95, 98, or 98SE, or ME, you're kind of stuck. Your old version no longer works, and the new version only works on Windows 2000, 2003, XP, or Vista. Fortunately, Spybot Search & Destroy--available for free at http://tinyurl.com/yrwy2 --still works with legacy versions of Windows.

Bonkian Youtubian Researchian Audience: Everyone

If you have been to an educational technology conference in the last few years, you've most likely seen a presentation by Dr. Curt Bonk. Bonk is a Professor of Instructional Systems Technology and adjunct in the School of Informatics at Indiana University (IU). One of the topics he's currently researching is YouTube, in particular

why people post, view, share, comment on, or subscribe to a YouTube video. Areas of interest include motivation, engagement, instructional design, and learning or educational value in a YouTube video.

So, Bonk and his colleagues at Indiana University recently created a survey that asks about 40 questions ranging from "how often do you watch YouTube videos" to "have you ever shared a YouTube video link with a friend?" If that sounds like something that interests you, point your favorite web browser to

http://trainingshare.com/video/

and click on the link at the top of the page to start the survey. You can preview all of the survey questions before you participate, and you don't have to enter any personally-identifiable information other than your email address ... and even that's optional. [You only need to enter your email address if you want to be entered into a drawing to win an Apple iPhone.]

If you don't want to participate in Bonk's survey but would like to view the results when they are published, that's cool too. Just make sure to bookmark Bonk's "Bonkian Youtubian Researchian" page at

http://indiana.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6703696942

or his blog at

http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/

because I am betting that Bonk will post the results to either or both of these pages in the not-too-distant future.

And if you know anyone who would be interested in Bonk's YouTube research--or, for that matter, in having a chance a winning an iPhone for taking an online survey--feel free to forward today's post to others.

That's it for today. Have a safe and happy week, and we'll talk again soon. No, really.

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 (\__/)  .'     )  ))       Patrick Douglas Crispen
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