Where's Wil?

So I hit Vegas

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:06:00 +0000

As you may or may not know, I'm getting married next month.

Erk.

I'm actually super psyched, since my girlfriend is total hotness. However, we all know that marriage is an excuse to party, so I hit Vegas with a few of my buds. The carnage is detailed here, on Flickr.

Apologies, again, for the total lack of updates. ChannelFlip has been keeping me rather busy, as I'm sure you can imagine. Why not head over there and check out the fruits of my extensive labours?

So in case you were wondering...

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:38:00 +0000

Why I haven't updated by blog in a couple of months:

ChannelFlip.com.

We have relaunched the site, raised a little money, and now I'm based down in London, delivering 10+ 5-min videos per week across Tech, Games and Film - and with a bunch more content sections launching very soon.

This is keeping me very busy.

We have assembled a great new team to work on ChannelFlip - Justin, my co-founder, is now working full time with us, and Katharine is also back doing the games show. We've got a great new video producer Arnold, who is not only a whizz in Final Cut but he's got some wizzard After Effects skills too, which should be useful to us in the future. We've also hired a full-time commercial director to sell the advertising on the site, which should keep us afloat.

We're actively chasing cool, new content so make sure you add ChannelFlip to your bookmarks or RSS feeds (or Twitter, for that matter) - details are here if you don't have them.

The process of raising money and starting fresh with ChannelFlip has been insane, and is something I'd genuinely like to sit down and write about at some point in the near future. Dealing with British VCs, my thoughts on business strategy, web businesses, new media content etc - I have learned an awful lot in the last few months. Primarily, I've learned that raising money for a business, moving house and getting married are three things that do not combine well, making the last few months the most stressful of my entire life, I think.

But I genuinely feel like we're getting there - some of the video content we've been putting out is starting to generate respectable numbers, and I think the quality is pretty good. Check out Justin's review of Cloverfield today, as an example (below).

Stay tuned for more updates from CFHQ as and when!

BBC goes flash

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:25:00 +0000

A while back now I blogged about how frustrating it was that the BBC insisted on using Windows Media and, gasp! Real Media for its streaming news programmes on the BBC News website.

A few months after the Flash conversion of the iPlayer, and it seems the BBC is getting with the game - more and more of the news clips being embedded on the site are Flash, and it does seem that DRM'd formats are being phased out, which is definitely a good thing. I've watched a heck of a lot more video on the BBC in the past week or so.

Short Flash clips are a lot more useful to me than longer, DRM'd bulletins. Check out this fantastic post from Justn Webb about the wooing of superdelegates in the US - the first video simply makes the piece.

The Beeb still doesn't allow for embedding of its player - the share button allows you to email a link but won't let you grab the player and put it on your own site, which seems like a slightly strange restriction. MAybe that's a feature for another year?

I'm not alone

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:07:00 +0000

So I'm walking down the street, listening to some tunes on my iPhone. I turn my head to look at something and - dang! The microphone for the headset catches on my shirt collar.

There's something about the particular length between the iphone, the mic and the cord that makes it catch on pretty much every shirt I wear and the constant tugging on my ear is really aggravating. Thankfully, it seems I'm not the only one.

Surely a campaign of sorts is in order?

Easter greets

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:16:00 +0000

So Easter is here, which means a) devout reverence and praise for our Lord Jesus and/or b) consumption of vast amounts of chocolate.

Since it's a bank holiday here in England, I'm going to be taking the time off to tend to do a few things. I intend to go through and edit a few Wikipedia pages to try and make sure that they're up to date: I'll add them in here for people interested as I fiddle with them.

Below is a nice bar of dark chocolate I got from my mother in law from a shop called Sophies, in Chesham, which makes the most insaaane chocolate. Tasty.

EDIT: Scratch that. I decided to have a go at making a Mahalo page instead. I just wrote the search results page for Michael Birch, of Bebo fame. Will see how the final thing comes out!

Back on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:02:00 +0000

So my buddy Jes emailed me and asked me to give Twitter another go. After listening to Leo and the gang go on about it incessantly on this week's podcast, I decided I would.

I have previously loved and left Twitter because it simply lacked stability. Every time I would go to post, something would break. AIM support was crucial to me, then was killed. Twitterrific had an awesome UI, but seemed to have a hard time actually connecting to servers. Not to mention the fact that Pownce had more functionality. (Although Pownce had an awful Air desktop app, I'm wondering what it's like now).

But I got back onto Twitter today and I'm starting to see why people are raving about it. It seems more stable now, Twitteriffic has made leaps and bounds (as long as you avoid the hideous Growl add-on - I have no idea why Mac users desire horrid, garish Windows-style notifications) and the whole thing is just a little more useful. I'm already starting to get into some conversations which are helpful.

So add me as @WilHarris if you fancy chatting. Whilst I can't follow everybody, I have direct messages set to ping my Twitteriffic so I can stay on top of them. Top stuff!

195

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:01:00 +0000

Well, I'm slowly working my way down the pounds. The numbers don't tel the whole story, of course - I'm spending a lot of time in the gym working weights, so I'm adding on (heavy) muscle as I burn fat. I definitely seem to be getting fitter and stronger, so the workouts that I'm following (kudos Men's Health magazine) are working.

I've discovered an awesome low(ish) calorie junk food: pizza. You can have half a homebake pizza (M&S pepperoni FTW) for around 350 calories, which makes for an awesome lunch with some salad.

Right, off again to pump some iron...

Making money in the music industry

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:36:00 +0000

Here's something interesting I just discovered. You know how nobody wants to pay money for music any more, we're told?

I talked to a friend who went to the recent Linkin Park gig at the O2 Arena in London. After the show, the band sells a gift back for £10 - a blank CD, sleeve liner and a PIN code. The next day, you can use the PIN code to download the whole performance from the night before in high quality, DRM free MP3 - then burn it to the blank CD you bought.

Linkin Park has been touring around the world for the past few months, and has offered every single live performance - recorded straight from the soundboard, so it sounds top-notch - for purchase straight after the show and download the next day. As far as I can gather from looking around message boards etc, this has been a rip roaring success. I, for one, have often wanted to purchase a live performance that I've been at - and the band has made it ridiculously easy, in this case.

With 25,000 people at a large gig like the O2, and just 10% of those buying the CD, that's an extra $50,000 a night the band is making in CD sales. Who said paid-for music couldn't prosper?

(Hint: If you didn't get to the O2 gig, the band doesn't let you buy the CD anyway - stupid, as I would certainly pay £10 for that gig on CD whether I went or not. Thankfully, BitTorrent has your back).

196

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:01:00 +0000

So I'm pretty sure that, as of today, I'm the leanest and meanest I've ever been in my adult life. I hit 196lbs having spent the past two months working out at the gym like crazy. I'm a bit more toned here and there so I'm putting on muscle and taking off fat - which is obviously pretty neat. The fatblogging community seems to have died, but I am finding incentive enough in my upcoming nuptials - I want to look damn good in those photographs!

I have discovered cool new way to pass the time - TV episodes on the iPhone! I have been watching episodes of MASH and The Wire while I run on the running machine - seeing as MASH comes in at 25 minutes, that's quite a nice length to be running for. Then for weights work while I'm moving around, I've been checking out a couple of new albums - Linkin Park Underground 7.0 (with a cool selection of recent live tracks by the band) and I've also been listening to Alan Alda's awesome new audiobook, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself - grabbed from Emusic, DRM-free. Top stuff.

Getting to grips with FileMaker

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:42:00 +0000

Man... it's been a long time since I did anything that remotely resembled programming - and boy, does it show. I did my A-Level Computing project in Visual Basic, using relational databases to create a point of sale and stock control system with an easy to use interface.

I was immensely proud of it at the time - every single field was error checked and input locked, and the whole thing ran on one multi-purpose algorithm that simply got fed a bunch of different variables to execute different procedures. It was wicked elegant, and I'l wager there wasn't a bug in it.

I had a go at doing a recipe book and shopping list planner in Filemaker Pro today. Man, I can remember relational database design no problem - what I can't do is get my head around Filemaker itself. It just doesn't seem as easy to use as VB or Access was - maybe I'm just being stupid, but I can't quite get to grips with the interface.

So if anyone is a Filemaker whizz out there, I'd sure appreciate some help!

Juno

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 11:38:00 +0000

I have to say that, despite being a bloke who enjoys balls-to-the-wall action flicks, most of my favourite movies are what I would term 'indie introspection' flicks, characterised by sharp dialogue, black humour and a large dose of 'hmmmm' factor. The leading light in these movies has to be Wes Anderson, and his movies Rushmore and The Darjeeling Ltd are absolutely up there, along with Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation and American Beauty by Sam Mendes.

Well I'm happy to report that I can add another top-class movie to that list, in Juno - the latest flick starring Superbad's Michael Cera. This is a fantastic film about a 16 year old girl, played in a terrifically tennagey manner by Ellen Page, who gets pregnant - and her journey to work out the best way to live her life and how to make out the relationships in her life. It's fantastically melancholy with some fantastic scripting.

I also love the music selection, which is pretentious but inspired. I'd thoroughly recommend grabbing the soundtrack, which includes a great closing track sung by Cera and Page which is really quite beautiful in the context of the film.

The trailer is embedded below - enjoy, and definitely head down to your local picture house to check it out.

Online backup follow-up

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:56:00 +0000

Thanks to commenters for the suggestions on online backup services. I did an episode of Unwired about it this week, looking at Mozy, Jungle Disk and .Mac. I have to say that I like all three, for different reasons. Video is below if you're interested in my take!

A good day for Sony in Haz-Land

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:45:00 +0000

So, looks like Sony won the Hi-Def war. Awesome - now I can finally invest in a few discs without worrying that I'm heading down the wrong path. I've been very impressed with the PS3 as a Blu-ray player - all I need now is for a few titles (Bourne, Matrix) to make the HD crossover.

Talking about Sony, how about this for service - I called yesterday to report my PS3 as broken, with a disc drive that doesn't read discs. The lovely lady on the end of the phone informed me that a guy would be here today with a replacement, and to just hand back my old one. None of this 28-day Microsoft malarkey - next day on your doorstep switchover service. I am seriously impressed by that.

Are things finally starting to swing Sony's way again?

The Wire

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:35:00 +0000

Having exhausted The West Wing, I've been looking around for new series' to start. Having had lots of recommendations for The Wire, the HBO series, I thought I'd give it a go. I have to say, it's exceptional. The first season is mind-blowingly good, the second season is not quite as good but awesome nonetheless, but the third season has picked right back up again. I love the fact it doesn't just stick to stereotypes - it really plays around with characters and preconceptions. Stringer Bell, in particular, is an amazingly well painted dude. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.

Next-gen console no. 2 cops it

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:37:00 +0000

So after losing my Xbox 360 for a few weeks last year to the infamous Red Ring of Death, today the PS3 has given up the ghost too.

After playing Devil May Cry 3 for a couple of hours - having first suffered through the 30 minute install - the console froze and had to be restarted. Upon restart, it seemed to have lost all ability to read discs. Playstation games, standard DVDs - none of them are recognised by the machine.

A quick poke around the official UK PS3 forums reveals a 13-page thread of people who have had their PS3 Blu-ray drives die. This is aggravating. What happened to good old quality control?

Online backup systems

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:40:00 +0000

I'm looking into the best way to back up my Mac on online. Obviously I back up locally - I also need to get a big disk for Time Machining - but I also like the idea of sticking crucial stuff in a dedicated online account. I've heard good things about Jungle Disk, and obviously I have the option of .Mac. Does anyone have any suggestions for good services that will keep my data safe, secure and, ideally, encrypted? Not that I'm paranoid or anything. But just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. o_O

Samsung massage vid

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:32:00 +0000

Bit of a bizarre one this. In order to really drive the point home that their latest phone is all about 'touch', Samsung hired a couple of masseuses to do backrub duty at their press event yesterday. Who am I to turn down a free elbow to the spine?

Kudos to my friend's brother's band, LemonJelly, for the mellow tune underneath.

I'm not big on politics

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:45:00 +0000

Actually, that's a complete lie. My friends will tell you I'm massive on politics. But regardless, this just blew me away:

I mean, holy smokes. Read the text that goes with it, written by Will.i.am, over at the HuffPo here.

Cripes.

-Wil

Readers who would be regular were I to post here more often: stand by for something kinda cool. I promise to make the wait worthwhile!

Wow... a month off

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 07:28:00 +0000

Doesn't time fly? Looks like I haven't blogged here in a month. Oops. ChannelFlip has been hella busy, and every spare second I've had has been spent either a) building that b) sleeping or c) playing Portal. Let's run with those.

a) CF.com is going great guns. I'm really proud of the content we are putting out and we're making some good progress on the traffic - over 300,000 videos served up in November. That's a big deal for us! We are hoping to get to 1m a month by April 08 - if you can help out, let us know! My latest video - covering the TOR network - got picked up by Boing Boing and Lifehacker, which was sweet.

b) I'm trying to exist on about 6-7 hours sleep a night at the moment. Whilst that might seem a lot to many of you, I am definitely a 8-9 hour kinda guy. I'm really feeling the pinch at the moment, trying to keep myself energised and motivated. Working six days a week - I take Saturday off to chill - is tough stuff, but seems to be paying off.

c) I'm almost done playing through Portal, which I have spent a few hours on this week. What a freakin' amazing game. Not only is the gameplay great but, of all things, it's the humour which really sells it. I want my cake! Everyone has been raving about the ending, so I'm looking forward to checking it out.

Buy my friend's book

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:10:00 +0000

Despite popular opinion, I actually have many friends that don't work in tech! Shocking, I know. One of these friends is a very talented lass called Frances Leviston, who is, I am reliably informed, the most exciting young poet in Britain today. Her first collection, called Public Dream, has been called "One of the most eagerly-awaited debuts in years."

So for the sake of seven quid, why don't you go and get it from Amazon? (UK link, US link) Even geeks need a bit of culture, and this is about as good as it gets!

In the midst of life

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:50:00 +0000

We are in death.

New birth: My brand new 17" MacBook Pro, 2.4GHz, 4GB, 250GB with uprated 1920x1200 screen. Abso-freaking-lutely fantastic. The screen is gorgeous. OSX was made for this DPI.

Death: My iPhone. It flew out of my hand as a coach driver braked hard going round a corner, and smashed on the floor. I attempted to replace the smashed screen, but just ended up busting up the casing and failing to re-connect the buttons properly. I got 90% of the way through the insane repair, and stuffed up the last 10%, dagnabbit.

So I'm now £2000 out on a new MacBook, and soon to be £300 out on a new iPhone. Oh yeah, and some insurance, I think.

Ack!

Five Leopard tweaks

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:28:00 +0000

So my latest video today shows some of my pet peeves with Leopard and some ways to fix them. Enjoy. Give me a Digg too!

Digg this!

More hours in the day

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 09:24:00 +0000

If you love something... steal it. So here's my 'stealing from Jason Calacanis' (again) post.

1. So when you're conscious for 17 hours of every 24 hour day, you'd think there'd be enough time to get things done. I mean, 17 hours - that's a lot of stuff. And it's true, there's plenty of time - until things go wrong. My weekend got eaten by the fact some video capture we did last week for PlayDigital went completely awry and I had to re-do it. This is the peril of doing a startup with such a small team - when something goes wrong, there's only one guy with the capacity to pick up the slack - you. So that's what I was up to - not a lot of fun.

2. I seriously don't know how the folks like Calacanis et al find the time to write massive blog posts - I guess life for him isn't quite the startup life I have. I suppose that's the difference between a $16m startup and a $50k startup! Every hour I spend in front of the computer I'm either editing, writing, administrating or trying to pimp our site. Every minute I'm not in front of the computer I'm trying desperately to keep Alex happy with actual 'face time' as opposed to 'facebook time' :o)

3. But that said, I wouldn't change it. The great thing about a startup is that, if you do it write, everything happens so fast.

4. We had over 50,000 viewers last month watching almost 150,000 videos. That's a good result in my book. I honestly had no idea whether people would even like the videos, let alone come back and watch more. Our subscription numbers are slowly going up in iTunes, which suggests that we're picking up new readers and keeping the old ones. Can't ask for much more than that.

5. My business model for ChannelFlip was always based on wide distribution -folks viewing the videos on sites other than ours. We're talking to a few big hitters right now about running our content, and that's going to see our numbers go through the roof assuming we can pull it off. But who knows, spanners are lying around everywhere.

6. The new series of 24 looks interesting - I wasn't so amped for it after the last season which was kinda lame, but the previews look actually decent. If only Hulu didn't lock itself down to US only - Bittorrent all the way. Welcome to globalisation?

7. I have stopped watching Heroes (appalling season opening) and Prison Break (again? seriously?) House is holding me, still, but I feel I've been spoiled by watching West Wing back to back. I mean, does TV get any better? At the moment, it seems not.

8. On the same note, I'm on the fence on the whole HD thing. I love the idea of watching movies in higher quality, great picture etc. But I'm not really sure I see the point in buying a new player for it. It's not like I spend a great deal of time watching movies - I'd rather a machine that handled internet TV better (think AppleTV but with Divx support).

9. Back to HD, we picked up a PS3 for the office last week so we can get to grips with the Christmas release schedule. What a joke. £299 for the basic package, which doesn't even include an HD cable. Yes, you heard me, £300 with no games and a COMPOSITE cable. Nice. Compare that to £250 for the X360 with ProEvo 08 and Forza 2 and it's not hard to see why PS3 isn't selling so well. The experience of setting up a PSStore account is a total nightmare, the interface is so badly designed. Makes it easy to appreciate the work MS has done into keeping the 360 experience totally consistent.

10. My sixth form college has asked me to write a little bit about starting a business and what we're doing at CF for their newsletter. That makes me very happy. One of my bugbears about education is that when you're taught about careers etc, nobody ever tells you that starting your own business doing something that's not in any of the career books is an option. More kids need to learn that leaving university and going into banking or law isn't the only option.

Anyway, enough for now. These posts are actually pretty good fun, I could get into this. Basically just a big old brain dump. I'm not sure my brain is that interesting. :o)

Digg our crazy Zelda video

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:03:00 +0000

We put together this Zelda DS review this week and I think it looks sweet. Katharine is doing a great job of keeping folks entertained whilst also delivering a decent videogame review.

So why not give us a Digg!!

The video is below. This is one of my favourites.

TakeMyTech... seriously.

noreply@blogger.com (Wil Harris) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:35:00 +0000

Here's a novel idea. My buddy Jason has put together an awesome new site called TakeMyTech where, you guessed it, he gives away technology. For free.

This is a really neet social idea, and plenty of people have commented and won some free stuff. It's compelling - who doesn't have tech kit lying around that they don't need, and who knows who could be using it?

Aside from the hundreds of commentors already, Jason managed to nab ThinkGeek as a sponsor, so you'll see a free product from them every week, too.

Competitions have long been part of the magazine culture, but I've never seen anyone just set up a website to give stuff away in quite this manner. It's an insane example of how the web is changing media. Check it out and win yourself some gubbins, eh?