Hulu Plus has two parts.  First, instead of just being able to watch the most recent couple episodes, the entire archive of the show’s current season (and maybe past seasons) would be available with a Hulu Plus account.  Also, many older network shows would have every episode produced available for streaming, including old shows such as Ally McBeal, The X-Files and some Saturday Night Live.

Second, Hulu Plus allows you more ways to watch these programs.  Along with the Hulu Plus announcement they released a Hulu Plus iPhone/iPad app.  Also, Hulu Plus is available via a software update on Internet-enabled Samsung TVs and Blu-Ray players.  Also, in the coming months, they have announced streaming to Sony and Vizio players/TVs.  And finally, the content is available up to 720p HD on these devices as well as other streaming devices in the coming months.

Hulu Plus is going to cost $9.99/month.  Sounds great?  Hardly!  Paying the $10 does not get rid of ads.  It might get you less ads; but mostly it gives you more content to watch.  However, for as little as $8.99/month, you can get much of this same content on Netflix streaming (as well as rent a DVD or two).  OK, Hulu will exclusively have newer episodes than Netflix because Netflix doesn’t get them until on or after the season is released on DVD, but even then Netflix doesn’t have ads at all.  I guess some people may pay the $10 for the content, but I don’t think many will.

What shouldn’t be happening?  Using the iPhone/iPad app and watching it on your Samsung player is only available to Hulu Plus members.  What??  That’s right, Hulu has an iPhone/iPod app, but you can’t use it unless you pay for Hulu Plus.  This makes NO sense!!  Sure, list the content that they can’t access and try to charge them the $10 if they want to watch it, but making a subscription to watch Hulu videos on your iPhone is just ridiculous.  Right now, you can watch hundreds of episodes of shows on your computer for free, but you can’t watch these shows on iPhone/iPad or Samsung.

My guess is that the smart folks at Hulu get it; they would love to show us all the content whenever possible.  However, because of their ownership by the networks and the content being tightly controlled by the networks, their hands are tied.  What the networks seems to be trying to do is still make it easiest to watch the show on your TV; if you miss the show, then watch it on Hulu later.  News flash, Hulu: Most of the people I know never watch live TV, and half of them don’t even own a TV.  One reason they want to make you watch TV is because they show advertisements on TV within the content and that’s still where they make the most of their revenue.  They need to figure out that they should be in the same business with Hulu: selling ads.  They can sell more targeted ads to viewers on Hulu and they could still run 3-4 engaging ads per commercial break and most would still watch.  Also, make the content (with the ads) available to anyone who wants to watch it on their TV or iPhone.  People who don’t want to tune in every Thursday at 9/8c can watch on Friday on their Blu-Ray player or iPad and the networks still get their money, even if they don’t get the bragging rights that they own Thursday night.

The television networks are delaying the realization that they do not control the thoughts of America.  The movie Network documented that era thirty-four years ago.  People have more to tune into than ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox.  They have the Internet.  They have a happy hour with friends.  They have a movie to watch.  If tools like Hulu aren’t expanded to reach more people and more places, the networks are going to quickly find that they have no audience any more.

First, I’ll go over what’s not my ideal weekend.  I guess I’m not that outdoorsy of a person that I want to be outdoors the whole weekend.  I do know people who almost need to be outdoors to relax and they seem to love to have a weekend away from everything at the cabin.  But I definitely find that to be a waste of my weekend – there’s just too much downtime with nothing to do, unless there’s a good book to read, although I can’t really read a good book for more than a couple hours at a time.

You see, to be in the web programming industry, you need to be constantly learning.  I often spend an hour or two reading up on blogs from friends mixed with blogs about industry news and trends and occasionally pick up a heavier programming book.  I also work a bit on a web programming project for myself or maybe another learning/improvement project related to administrating my server or getting things set up more robustly.  (Maybe one of these weeks I’ll get Git set up on my computer.)

Of course, the weekend needs a bit of fun.  First of all, whenever projects are going on, there is plenty of great music to listen to at a reasonable (or loud) volume.  If learning or working on a project is not going well, I’ll take a break and watch a show on Hulu or from a podcast I subscribe to.  Also, most Friday nights and at least a couple hours of Saturday and Sunday have to be some sort of activity hanging out with friends or family.

Of course, this type of weekend is not as fun as spending the weekend in Chicago, going to a MuteMath concert or a cookout at the parent’s house, but it is definitely a favorite mode of a weekend.  I feel like I have accomplished some of my personal projects and had fun in the process.  Of course, I expect your weekend to be a bunch different.  What’s your favorite way to spend time out of the office?

First, let me say that when the debates and the inagauration took place, I had no problem finding video of it later in the day or the next morning on iTunes’ Podcast area. In fact, on a couple, I already had the feed on my iTunes and it just started coming in. But now, 24 hours after Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress, I can’t find a video version to easily load onto my iPod.

iTunes is definitely to blame on at least one count. The browsing of the iTunes Podcast area is abysmal at best and unusable at worst. You can find the top things and the ones featured, but you’ve got no good ways to browse other things. And don’t think the search box is going to help you much, because every time you type in a search it searches the whole iTunes Store and you get all this other crap until you click to say, “I want only podcasts, you stupid program! That’s why I was browsing in the Podcasts section!” Even then, searching for “Obama address Congress” in the search box give you nothing but one radio station’s commentary on it. If you broaden it to “Obama address” you get a couple top podcasts that do feature Obama giving an address, but this gets me to my next point.

First, Barack Obama’s White House administration does have their own podcast, and the weekly radio address is well-presented via this podcast in both video or audio formats. I definitely am subscribed to this podcast, although I recommend doing your research afterwords through other news sources, because even if he’s the President, you can’t really take his word on everything. Second, ABC News offers the next best thing: a podcast with the exact same stuff that they host and deliver. I like that they did put the address in audio form in their audio version of the podcast, but I want video! Their video version of the weekly address podcast has no such item. For the debates, other podcasts such as Anderson Cooper 360 also put the videos in their podcast feed, but none of them are offering it up this time.

The web-savvy crowd at my blog may say, “But Dan, it’s an hour long! That’s a big file and that’s lots of badwidth!” Yeah, you’re right, but that didn’t stop them for the Inaguration address or any of the debates. In fact, the debates were longer but they were done in great video quality that was easy to load on your iPhone. Plus, if you want, throw an advertisement or two in there, I’ll watch it if it’s interesting or is only 30 seconds long. Then, there’s the others who will say, “Dan, I already watched all of it on Hulu.” Yeah, I know, but I can’t load that video into my iPhone for my daily commute. Then, as TJ said, I could try loading it up via YouTube on my iPhone, but I like being able to see Obama if I’m going to watch the video, and the only that the YouTube video quality on the iPhone is good for is videos of a cat on the Roomba. Plus, when I hit the tunnel under the airport then the streaming video will just stop playing, probably, and that’s no fun.

Hopefully, in the next couple hours, a solution will appear. If they do, don’t let any tech person from the major network that put it out say it takes over a day to encode a video for the iPod, because it doesn’t. Otherwise, I may just have to stay uninformed for the rest of my life. Or, worse yet, I’ll have to read a transcript.

Microblogging services such as Twitter, Pownce, FriendFeed and their social media friends are also another fun place to express an opinion.  Twitter has one interesting limitation – that is, all posts have to be 140 characters or less.  In some ways, this makes it as much of an art form as a short form blogging service.  For my personal account, one of the reasons I use Pownce is because I like to convey a unique thought without having to edit for 140 characters.  But, for more rehearsed messaging, I figure that the 140-character limit can be a sort of editing challenge.

With this in mind, I created the trailer_review Twitter account.  On this account, I post an 140-character or less review of the movie preview, starting with the title of the movie and ending with a link to the preview.  But, after posting a couple trailer mini-reviews, I decided that I’d want a website to go along with that I could provide more information at a later time, if I wanted.  Plus, not everyone is yet on Twitter, so maybe others would like a separate site where the could grab an RSS feed, leave comments, etc.  Thus, thanks to the power of Drupal, it took a couple hours to get a functional, decent-looking website working.  This is the store of Trailer-Review.com, my first-ever Drupal weekend project.  (Full disclosure: It took me two weekends to do all these steps because I was working on a couple paying freelance projects and doing other things, but these processes could easily be done in one free weekend.)  To paraphrase Strong Bad, “Feel free to follow along with my simple step-by-step instructions. I make [Drupal] FUN!”

Step I: Setting Up The Site

To set up a site, you need to have a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server that you can set the site up on.  OK, so I lied, you could run it on Windows, you can run it on IIS, and of course you and run it on Python (or even Oracle, I hear).  So, basically, you need PHP, but the LAMP stack is the easiest.  Set up the site, then download the latest version from the drupal.org website and decompress it.  (We used Drupal 6.6.)  Access the public URL of the site and follow the instructions to install the site.  You will need database information and will be able to set up an administrator account.

Step II: Adding Contributed Modules

Download the following modules for Drupal 6.x:

• Twitter
• CCK (Content Construction Kit)
• Link

Uncompress these folders and place those in a folder called sites/all/modules folder. Then, go to “Administer”->”Site Building”->”Modules” and turn on these part of the modules:

• Content
• Link
• Trigger
• Twitter
• Twitter actions

Now we’re ready to start configuring the modules we’ve installed.

Step III: Configuring Content and Link

To setup the content items, we want to have the title and body as well as the URL for the site to watch the movie trailer.  The title and body are included in the default stories, but we’ll use the Content Construction Kit to create that URL field and the link to that trailer.  Here we go:

1. Go to “Administer”->”Content Types”.
2. Click on the “manage fields” link next to “Story”.
3. Under “Add,” type the label “Trailer Link”, field name “field_trailer_url”, and “Link” for the type of data.
4. Click on “Save”.
5. On the next page underneath “Global settings,” check “Required”.
6. Select “Static Title” for the “Link Title” section.  Click “Save field settings”.
7. Towards the top of the page, click on “Display fields”.
8. Change “Label” from “Above” to “<Hidden>” and click “Save”.

Step IV: Configuring Twitter

For this site, we want Twitter to be posted to any time new content is posted to the site.  To do this, we use the Twitter Actions part of the Twitter Module.  We will set up an Action and then use the Trigger module to make it run every time we create some content.  Here’s how we want to configure it:

1. Go to “Administer”->”Site configuration” and click on “Actions”.
2. At the bottom of the screen under “Make a new advanced action,” select “Post a message to Twitter…” and click “Create”.
3. Type in your Twitter account name and password and then type in the message. (Note the use of the % symbol with specific keywords allows you to add the new content – for my site, I used %title: %teaser %node_url.)
4. Click “Save”.
5. Next, go to “Administer”->”Site building” and click on “Triggers”.
6. Under the “Trigger: After saving a new post” section, select the “Post a message to Twitter” action (or whatever you named it during Step 3 and 4).
7. Click “Assign”.

Voila!  Now we’ve got a working site that posts to Twitter when we post and also provides a link to the trailer.  However, there’s a couple things more.

Appendix A: URL Shortening for Twitter

First, we want to give us more space on our Twitter posts so that, instead of Twitter using http://www.trailer-review.com/node/14 as our URL, we get a shorter URL. There are a number of fancy URL shortening services such as TinyURL, but I chose Bit.ly because it’s a bit shorter than TinyURL anyways. After signing up for an account, I can write some code to request a shortened URL for my longer URLs via their handy API. Unfortunately, in order to get these in the Twitter Actions module, I have to hack the sites/all/modules/twitter/twitter_actions/twitter_actions.module file. I took this part:

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  // Node-based variable translation is only available if we have a node.
  if (isset($node) && is_object($node)) {
    $variables = array_merge($variables, array(
        '%uid' => $node->uid,
        '%node_url' => url('node/'. $node->nid, array('absolute' => TRUE)),
        '%node_type' => node_get_types('name', $node),
        '%title' => $node->title,
        '%teaser' => $node->teaser,
        '%body' => $node->body
      )
    );
  }

and replaced it with this:

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  // Node-based variable translation is only available if we have a node.
  if (isset($node) && is_object($node)) {
    $node_url = url('node/'. $node->nid, array('absolute' => TRUE));
    $headers = array('Content-type' => 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
    $short_url_json = drupal_http_request('http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version=2.0.1&longUrl='.urlencode($node_url).'&login=BITLY_API_ID&apiKey=BITLY_API_KEY', $headers, 'POST', NULL);
    $short_url = json_decode($short_url_json->data)->results->$node_url->shortUrl;
    $variables = array_merge($variables, array(
        '%uid' => $node->uid,
        '%node_url' => url('node/'. $node->nid, array('absolute' => TRUE)),
        '%node_type' => node_get_types('name', $node),
        '%short_url' => $short_url,
        '%title' => $node->title,
        '%teaser' => $node->teaser,
        '%body' => $node->body
      )
    );
  }

If you read PHP code pretty well, you can see that I added one more variable to the options for the configurable Action we made. I’ve created a %short_url variable that has taken the old %node_url data and retrieved a shorter version from the Bit.ly site. To get it to print out the shorter URL, though, you have to go back to “Administer”->”Site configuration”->”Actions” and configure the action we made in Step IV to use %short_url instead of %node_url. (Of course, to get this to work, you have to replace the BITLY_API_ID and BITLY_API_KEY with the ones supplied in your Bit.ly account page.)

Appendix B: Keeping Track of the Character Count

Since I want to post these pithy reviews to Twitter, I want to know how many characters long the title and body with all the formatting is.  Therefore, I created the “count_characters” module.  First, I created count_characters.info file as follows:

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; $Id$
name = Count Characters
description = Adds a custom listing of how many characters are left.
php = 5.1
core = 6.x

Then, I created the count_characters.module file where I Add space to list the characters in all content add/edit forms and include the forthcoming JavaScript file:

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< ?php
/**
 * Implementation of hook_form_alter().
 */
function count_characters_form_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {
  if (substr($form_id, -10) == '_node_form') {
    drupal_add_js(drupal_get_path('module', 'count_characters') .'/count_characters.js', 'module');
    $form['count_chars'] = array(
      '#type' => 'markup',
      '#prefix' => '<div>',
      '#value' => '<strong>Character Count:</strong> <span id="character_count">Unknown</span>',
      '#suffix' => '</div>',
      '#weight' => '-5',
    );
  }
}

Finally, here’s some JavaScript that uses the JQuery library built into Drupal to count up the size of the title and body and tell you how many characters this will be on Twitter. This is count_characters.js:

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if (Drupal.jsEnabled)
{
	$(document).ready(function()
	{
		$("#edit-title").keyup(function() { calculateTotalChars(); });
		$("#edit-body").keyup(function() { calculateTotalChars(); });
		calculateTotalChars();
 
		function calculateTotalChars() 
		{
			titleCount = $("#edit-title").val().length;
			bodyCount = $("#edit-body").val().length;
			totalChars = titleCount + 2 + bodyCount + 1 + 19;
			$("#character_count").html(totalChars);
		}
	});
}

Note that in line 11, we not only take the length of the title and body together, but add some more characters. The Bit.ly URL should be 18 or 19 characters, at the most, and then we have 2 characters for “: ” between the title and the body and 1 for another space between the body and the URL. Save these files in sites/all/modules/custom/count_characters/ and then enable the module via the “Administer”->”Site building”->”Modules” page. Now we know exactly how many characters our Twitter post will be!

Final Thoughts

For a weekend project, this is a great start of a site hat may prove to be a useful little site someday. There were a couple other things I did, such as customizing the color of the Garland theme, customizing the comment settings, and enabling OpenID for commenters to login via OpenID if they like. Of course, there’s always more work to do, such as creating a custom design, added embedded versions of movie trailers to each post, and maybe integrating with other social media services. But that’s for another weekend project!

So, as I mentioned in the blog post about the ILikeAndy.com T-shirt, I enjoy Andy Osenga and his music.  I’ve also loved reading his blog over the last couple years in addition to his music.  He’s one of my favorite bloggers.  But what I found while writing that story was that I’ve not been reading his blog for the last six months!

How does this happen?  Well, I’ve just been reading his blog via the RSS feed in my Google Reader, so I haven’t been visiting his site.  However, about six months ago, he got a new site, and the new site’s RSS feed was not the same.  Google Reader doesn’t notify me of this, so I probably at first assumed that Andy was too busy to blog and then forgot about his blog completely.

The great thing is that Google Reader keeps track of what’s new for me.  Google doesn’t usually screw up, but what happens when the webmaster forgets a little detail like that?  I miss six months of content and have to spend a couple hours on a Saturday catching up.  Should I be checking people’s actual sites more often?  I hope not – there’s way too many sites that I follow via RSS to do that.

I guess the moral of the story is to make sure that you’re not missing anything that’s important to you on the ‘net.  Unless you’re a webmaster, in which case, you should make sure you got your stuff together.  And speaking of which, I gotta go manage some sites.

The system works much better than the flimsy paper SuperSaver passes they’ve been using for a long time. Although they say the GoTo Cards will cost $5, right now they’ll give ‘em to you for free if you put $20 on them. Like the SuperSavers, every $10 you buy comes with $1 of free value on it to encourage use over change and bills. The card just needs a quick swipe over the pad to transfer data, so it’s nice and quick. You can reload the card with value via any Light Rail fare machine or via the GoTo Card Website. Plus, it can also handle monthly passes as well. For the last 9 months or so, I’ve been using the card, and maybe for the past 6 months, I’ve been using the monthly pass without a hitch even though nobody officially said I could as a part of the early test group.

I thought that they spent some money doing some kinda fun ideas of ads to put on the light rail stations. These ads are stuck underfoot on the light rail platform and liken the GoTo Card to other common items. Too bad the website is so boring (and only viewable over an SSL connection for no reason).

One of the coolest thing in a while is the official Simpsons Avatar Creator over at the official movie site. (Above are some that Andrew Osenga made to depict him and his family.) It’s fun, because you can make almost an infinite number of possibilities of characters, including all the characters in the movie and, hopefully, yourself. I haven’t played around with it enough, but I didn’t find it too easy to make whatever, or at least not make something that you say, “That’s totally my friend Isaac as a Simpsons character.” It’s definitely fun, and you can share them with your friends if you like what you came up with. As the site says, “Ready to work some yellow magic?”

Also, one of the most ingenious things is their recent partnering with 7 Eleven to transform a dozen stores into a full-fledged Kwik-E-Mart for a month or two. There’s not one in my market, but everyone who does have one seems to be talking about it. Not only does the outside look like a Kwik-E-Mart, but they’ve hired people that look like Apu to man the counter and make the usual silly comments. They also have all the signature Kwik-E-Mart foods, such as Squishies, Buzz Cola, and Krusty-Os cereal, and even a Radioactive Man special-edition Comic Book. In my opinion, this is a very creative and fun way to promote the movie, and I applaud 7-Eleven for doing something a bit risky but ultimately fun.

For years there has been talks about the proposed Mall of America Phase II. I recently found their new promotional website and it contains a lot of interesting information.

The expansion will be add 5.6 million square feet to the north end of the existing mall and will apparently be more open and let in more natural light than the original structure. The plan includes more parking structures and a skyway connection to the nearby IKEA. The expansion will integrate seamlessly with the current mall and connect to it on all four floors (including adding connections to the near-dead fourth floor).

A number of major structures are included in the mall plans. One of the main tenants is Bass Pro Shops, a major national outdoor sporting goods retailer. Major entertainment provider AEG will be building a 6,000-seat performing arts amphitheater. Some information says something about an NHL-size hockey rink, and I don’t know where that’s going to be located. The plans also leave room for an office tower and a couple hotels attached to the complex, including a family waterpark/hotel.

The new space seems to be designed to have different districts or areas of shopping, most of which look a bit more high-priced and trendy. The fourth floor seems to be devoted to entertainment attractions such as a movie theater, dinner theater, nightclubs, etc. According to the designs, there’s also a “High Fashion District” and a “Home District”. The main event looks to be a very open “Town Square” area, which looks like it may even mimic Times Square a bit. A central corridor of the new expansion is called “Canal Street” and is rumored to be a Venice-style center completed with gondola boats and everything. The plans also show an environmentally-friendly co-generation facility that will generate some heat and electricity for the building.

The annoying part is that there’s no news as to when this will be implemented, although the mall’s Wikipedia article says groundbreaking is supposed to happen in Spring 2007. The Wikipedia article also cites some concern from “outside forces” such as the city of Bloomington who are concerned about the ability for the $1.78 billion project to be completed. A state bill that aims to make the building construction tax-exempt seems to claim that construction will start in 2008 and finish up in 2011.

There are a number of improvements to the mall that seem to be a bit closer to reality and completed sooner. One is the reintroduction of a bar on the vacated fourth floor in the form of Cantina Corona, a Mexican bar/restaurant that is the first-ever place to bear the Corona brand. Also planned is the very high-end Klimpton Hotel near the south end of the mall. And finally, The Park at MOA will soon begin construction of a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter type roller coaster, to be completed in 2008. These style of rides are some of the most cutting-edge and the mall says it will be the first upside down roller coaster at the Mall of America. Nice!

I always like the pictures and diagrams, so below are the floor-by-floor plans off the website:

Level 1:

Level 2:

Level 3:

Level 4:

Elevations:

Model Views (from the City of Bloomington site):

View from West:

View from East:

Should you, as a consumer care? Probably. Besides Google, DoubleClick has the best profile of what sites you visit and your purchasing habits through their DoubleClick cookies. Of course, there is the possibility of Google trying to use this data to better target and identify you. Of course, DoubleClick quickly tried to destroy that rumor. However, a full acquisition from Google, a merging of systems, and/or a change in their terms of service could easily change that.

While Google by no means has a monopoly on Internet advertising, they’re quickly becoming the evil empire of the Internet that we somehow just can’t help but love. And, heck, as long as my Google stock keeps going up, I’m OK with it, I guess.