#“Netflix UK/Ireland shoots itself in the foot already. No Lilyhammer for us.”

For me, in my innocence, the arrival of Netflix over here represented far more than justanothersource of media at a good price. I hoped it was the beginning of the end for the nonsensical region-limiting of media based on pre-internet, pre-airplane, business models.

All of the vested interests can fight all they like, but eventually every movie, song and TV show will be available in every format at the same time globally. You either facilitate this happening or you will go the way of the manuscript scribes.

As a Silicon Valley company, I had thought Netflix was at the vanguard of this change. Sure they have to work with the existing media structures, but bit-by-bit, we thought they were chipping away and fighting the good fight on our behalf.

I read about Lilyhammer recently and I got very excited. It is the firstoriginalTV series to be co-produced by Netflix and broadcast over their system. Even better it starred the wonderful Steve Van Zandt as a wiseguy going into witness protection in Norway.

I thought we would finally have proof that the new models work. A single TV series available simultaneously worldwide wherever Netflix was available. Two big fingers to the distribution dinosaurs.

It started on NRK on Jan 25th and then Netflix on Feb 6th, so last night I loaded up Netflix on the Wii (Sidenote: Someone in Netflix is paying attention, it now offers Netflix or Netflix Kids Only when you launch it. Nice one).

But to my horror Lilyhammer was not listed. WTF?

Yup, they are only showing a Norwegian show in Netflix US/Canada/SouthAmerica. A quick bit of Googling reveals the probable reason why. They have sold the rights to BBC4. Or BBC FUR as some wag has named it due to The Killing and Borgen.

Jesus wept.

This is, by all accounts, a really great new TV series, which could have been the flagship for Netflix in new territories. It would show that they are about a lot more than old episodes of Fawlty Towers. And what do they do? They let the BBC get their mitts on it.

What next? They let RTE buy it in Ireland and then they don’t broadcast it just so they can shaft TV3? As they so love to do.

Netflix should have paid whatever it took to get all the rights to that show outside of Norway. It is staggering incompetence that they didn’t do so. Rupert must be laughing his ass off at their cack-handed bungling.

As I said last night when I heard about it, we all know that BBC4 isn’t where most people in UK/Ireland will be getting their copy of Lilyhammer.

At the end of the 30 day trial, I fully intended to subscribe to Netflix. It wasn’t just about access to lots of slightly aged but still good content, it was to support the principle of the service too. Now I’m not so sure.

We have to watch the Netflix UK Twitter account broadcasting fake interest about 40 year old TV shows:

You can now enjoy the misadventures of Basil Fawlty w/ Seasons 1-2 of acclaimed British sitcom Fawlty Towers! bit.ly/yGesL3

— Netflix UK & Ireland (@NetflixUK) January 24, 2012

Whilst we watch the Netflix US account talking about a show they helped pay for but won’t show us:

.@stevievanzandt of The Sopranos is back as a gangster… this time in Norway!Check out Lilyhammer now! bit.ly/–Lilyhammer

— Netflix (@netflix) February 6, 2012

Who runs PR and Comms in Netflix? Have you heard of the internet?

Unfortunately, this is the OTT image that popped into my head last night when thinking about Netflix. I hope I’m wrong.

#“Underground Lakes, Antarctic UFOs, Nazis on The Moon and The Mayans”

It’s a funny old week when all of the above come together in your head isn’t it? Bear with me for a sec.

As we all know, The Mayans predicted the world would end in 2012. This ties nicely into the long-awaited B-movie Iron Sky coming in April - “In 1945 the Nazis went to the Moon. In 2012 they’re coming back”. Or something.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_IndUbcxc

These three reminded me of a sci-fi book I read as a young teenager. Probably one that my Dad picked up in an airport in the early 80s. Of course I couldn’t remember the name of it and spent 30 minutes googling variations of “ufo, nazis, antarctica, sci-fi”. Finally I found it, Genesis!

That plot has stuck in my head for the guts of 30 years. Brilliant, twisted and right on the edge of believable. Overly wordy sure, but he pressed all my teenage buttons.

But then it got even better as I looked the author W.A. Harbinson up yesterday and discovered that he’s from Northern Ireland and now lives in West Cork!!! He’s 82 70 years old and I think he deserves a resurgence.

You’ll never get a paper copy of the book now but brilliantly, you can get it on Kindle. It’s only $4. Trust me, you’ll love it, even if you hate it.

I’ve also thought for 30 years that it would make an amazing movie. Go on, someone, do it.

  UPDATE: W.A. Harbinson has left a comment below, which was a lovely surprise on a Saturday night. He also linked to his own site which I was not aware of. It has info on some of his more recent books too, which are avalable as downloads.

#“Twitter? Facebook? Pah, so over them. Anyone who’s anyone is on Weibo now”

Go on, I dare ya.

I’m conoroon Weibo too.

#“Roku + Netflix + iPlayer now available in Ireland. Anyone using Roksbox or roConnect?”

The Verge is reporting that the Roku LT and Roku 2 XS are now shipping in UK and Ireland. They both come with Netflix and BBC iPlayer support. (Oddly their UK site still says “Coming Soon” for the LT).

The LT is particularly interesting as it is only 49despite the lack of wired Ethernet or 1080p.But both models suffer the major and strange limitation that they cannot stream your home content, even over UPNP.

However I have found two free apps, Roksbox and roConnect which create a private Roku channel for you which gives you access to your home media. Neither of them are UPNP either, they require you to install a web-server on a home machine. Having said that, it looks like a five minute job.

Anyone have experience with either app?

I have to admit I’m tempted by the Roku. 49 is very very cheap for a media streamer that does 720p.

I got the Patriot PBO Core from Amazon UK this week to replace a dead XBOX+XBMC and I’ll review it over the weekend. It is a fine piece of kit for local streaming up to 1080p and does SMB shares rather than the UPNP horror. I’m not sure why I mentioned 1080p since it is connected to a 12 year old 14” CRT Philips ‘portable’ TV.

But it doesn’t do Netflix except via TVersity or PlayOn. And both of those are currently broken for Netflix Ireland+UK due to the silly incompatible way Netflix has implemented everything over here.

One open question is whether you need a global iPlayer subscription to use it in Ireland on the Roku. I assume so.

#“I will be deeply disappointed if House doesn’t die from Lupus in the final episode”

In a statement just released to the media, Executive Producers David Shore, Katie Jacobs and Hugh Laurie have announced that this current 8th season of the hit Fox series HOUSE will in fact be its last. See for yourself after the jump.

#“No I don’t want to install your stupid hamstrung iPad App, I want your web-site”

I saw a tweet along those lines the other day (sorry can’t remember who) and it really struck a chord. These “please install our App” pop-ups are infuriating in general on both Android and iOS. Every single vbulletin site I have gone to recently has done it. Why the hell would I want a separate App for every damned site I visit?

But yesterday was the new nadir with Dropbox. Not only do you get the pop-up, they won’t let you visit information/download pages for any other platform on the iPad, they just auto-re-direct you to the iPad page!!

For fucks sake Dropbox, I wanted to read what was involved in installing on a Linux server. Do I really need to use a desktop to read that page?

This finally revealed a very good reason for jailbreaking your iPad - you get a User-Agent Switcher and can pretend you are running Firefox on the Desktop. Also handy for those stupid sites who want to force a dumbed-down mobile web-site on you.

Piss-poor reduced functionality Apps are the scourge of iOS and Android. Last weekend I ended up uninstalling the iPad Facebook App and now use the website in Safari just so I can have a goddammed Share button.

#“No more accidents :-) Android Transparent Screen App”

This app gives you the opportunity to use your phone as usual, while being able to see the image of your camera transparently on the entire screen.

Installing now.

#“If you develop on Twitter APIs in Ireland, you have to attend Dublin Teatime”

I attended the first London Twitter Teatime back in October. It was an organisational disaster but an absolute must-not-miss. We were in a big room with not just some key Twitter technical people but also with many of the key third party developers in the UK including the DataSift and PeerIndex guys.

The Q&A session was particularly good with no-one being too shy about asking the hard questions (cough Twitter Annotations).

Big congrats to Donal Cahalane and the guys here for announcing Twitter Dublin Teatime. If there is one thing you can be sure of with Donal involved, the event will kick ass.

Given the burst of activity around Twitter here in the past 24 months, there are going to be some amazing people to talk to on the night.

All details over on Web2Ireland.org and sign-up on Twitter. Numbers are limited, and given that London was jammed, I’d sign-up right now if I was you.

See ya there.

#“App Inventor early access to educators with current and pending courses”

Are you teaching App Inventor in a course this Spring, or beginning a course soon? Then you are eligible to apply for early access to the experimental version of App Inventor at the MIT Center for Mobile Learning. Apply by filling out the form at: http://bit.ly/MitEarly

#“This crap is why people infringe copyright”

A few weeks back, Leonard Cohen’s new album was pre-announced and I went to the “Leonard Cohen Global Store” to buy it. They had a special offer of an extra free track available for download immediatelyif you pre-ordered the MP3s. Which I duly did.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find a link to download the free track anywhere but I wasn’t that bothered and waited for the album to be released.

I was very disappointed to realise that the Global Store is just a front for Sony Music. So unlike Louis CK, Lenny is only getting a tiny fraction of the money I paid. Given his hugeglobalfan-base I hope he switches to the direct model for the next album and makes the money he is due.

Finally on Monday the album was released and I was sent a link.

The link let me download the free track. No amount of clicking would show me the album. This was followed by to-and-froing of emails with Sony where they were straight-up about the fact that the store was broken. Eventually I was sent a link to this:

Yep, I had to click one song at a time. Also, check out the fantastic layout in Chrome. I was surprised I didn’t see a “Best viewed in Internet Explorer 5 or Netscape Navigator 2.0” in the footer.

So it took a week to download something legally or I could have spent 2 minutes being naughty. Actually the ideal for everyone would be that I pay the money and then I go to adodgysite to get what I need.

Sony, EMI and the other dinosaurs need to spend less money hiring lawyers and more money hiring developers, UX designers and people who understand 21st century business models. Otherwise they will be gone the way of the East India Company in the next 3 years. Tick tock.