Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

I'm surrounded by stacks of boxes filled with all the stuff we don't use on a regular basis. The everyday stuff is soon to join the cardboard mountain destined for the back of a truck bound for Seattle. I hate moving. Didn't like doing it when it was across town, dislike it just as much when it's 1800 miles across the country. The one redeeming factor in having to box up all of our worldly belongings is the opportunity to evaluate each item and determine it's relative usefulness. The stuff we don't need is destined for the dump or recycling via donation or ebay.

Unfortunately, I think some of the eBay pile may need to wait until I move, because I'm running out of time to get it shipped. Top of the list of items that need to go are my Canon ZR70 camcorder, which is a decent 1CCD model that doesn't see much action ever since I bought the 2003 version of the 3CCD Panasonic PV-GS120. The other major ebay item is an HP 4155 Pocket PC, complete with the thumb keyboard attachment and a Javo edge retractable USB cable (which doubles as a charger).

Some of the stuff I need to clear out can be yours for free. I've got 5 copies of my book, Easy Digital Home Movies, each bundled with 10 free downloads from MSN Music, to 5 random people who make a post in the MediaBlab forums between today and November 30. Paul doesn't know it yet, but he will be happy to ship those to you. I'll even autograph the book for you (unless you would prefer I didn't).

In addition to the physical house keeping I'm doing, I'm also making some online improvements. PMC Movies has about 20 more free downloads available. Some are currently live as you read this. All 20 will be available by Friday 26 November at the very latest. I also did away with BitTorrent as the download solution. It's a great idea in theory, and works extremely well for content that is in high demand (like pirated TV shows and Linux distributions), but over the long term, it is still a half-baked solution. The other new feature at PMC Movies is the option to order portable movies on DVD. People without broadband connections have complained that downloading 300MB video files is impossible. I agree, so we are now shipping bundles of the movies on data DVDs to eliminate the download headache. Each DVD will contain a minimum of 10 movies for $15. Some titles, like theWil Wheaton speech, are excluded from the DVD distribution due to licensing restrictions. Some portion of the revenue generated will be donated to the Internet Archive to help assist their project of getting public domain content out on the Web.