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Yeah, I know it's not good form to reply to one's own post, but I wanted to add further commentary since my first internet access device was a WebTV so I'm probably a bit more familiar with the quirks of browsing on TV's than most.

Navigation is a killer when browing on TV's. WebTV's hotspot-arrow-key navigation was fine for simple sites in the early days of the net, but complex sites were difficult. Some would have a huge number of tiny hotspots to move between. So Silk using a mouse-ish pointer controlled with the remote's directional pad is much better. However the silk doesn't have pgup/pgdown functionality, just scrollup/scrolldown which is slower. And I didn't see any "quick jump to page top or bottom" feature either.

WebTV was designed in the days of SDTV so the webtv browser was not designed for horizontal scrolling. In fact it couldn't horizontally scroll and websites designed for wider screens worked less well on it. But now TV's are HD and widescreen so most sites will work better, unless they're bloated up like CNN Video. (which is also slow on Android Chrome)

But the fact that the WebTV came with a IR keyboard made certain functions easier. For example, it was far far easier to access bookmarks/recents/history on the WebTV because the WebTV keyboard had dedicated keys for certain functions. And as mentioned above easy accessible pgup/pgdown/jumptotop/jumptobottom functionality.

There also doesn't seem to be any "integration" with other features. For example, when you booted up a WebTV and it connected it would take you to your "WebTV home" a partly customizable portal like thing that had news blurbs with topics you chose, weather, links to news about the WebTV service, help info, etc etc. It looked like this:

http://net4tv.com/voice/GRAPHI...

While Silk on TV has a menu/info page with links to news videos and at least some bookmarks it's got nothing like that. Or anything like WebTV's Messenger or Community features (webtv specific newsgroups, USENET and IRC) WebTV wasn't just a browser it was also mail, chat, even some limited video and audio. For example, one could easily send a link via e-mail or send an IM while browsing. Though most things on webtv were treated as special web pages.

For example, WebTV's IRC interface was basically a WebTV hosted webTV specific web page that provided a simple IRC interface. Thusly one could not browse the web or read an e-mail while chatting. (Not taking into account customized IRC pages that could be made) IRC on a webtv looks like this:

http://www.fun-lover.com/webtv...

But as a niche product without a large audience, there wasn't a huge incentive for REAL or Macromedia to help out WebTV to keep up with changing standards. I don't think any WebTV Plus unit got anything better than Flash 5 and the early units were stuck with Flash 3. WebTV users tended to complain a LOT about how WebTV networks weren't keeping up with the changing face of multimedia, especially the ones with the old classic boxes with their 2MB of RAM, 33.6K modems and only 1MB of flash storage. The plus units with their 8MB of RAM, 56K modems, and 1GB hard drives were better.

The Fire stick, however, is a media consumption device even if such functionality is compartmentalized into apps and being backed by Amazon means it keeps up with the internet.

One other thing I noticed is how the Fire stick doesn't use sound like the WebTV did. On a WebTV when you clicked a link, popped up the options menu or the IM thing or hit the bottom of a web page, there were various sound effects.

Ha it looks like Net4TV (once known as Web4TV voice) is still up:

http://www.net4tv.com/voice/in...

Yeah, I know it's not good form to reply to one's own post, but I wanted to add further commentary since my first internet access device was a WebTV so I'm probably a bit more familiar with the quirks of browsing on TV's than most.

Navigation is a killer when browing on TV's. WebTV's hotspot-arrow-key navigation was fine for simple sites in the early days of the net, but complex sites were difficult. Some would have a huge number of tiny hotspots to move between. So Silk using a mouse-ish pointer controlled with the remote's directional pad is much better. However the silk doesn't have pgup/pgdown functionality, just scrollup/scrolldown which is slower. And I didn't see any "quick jump to page top or bottom" feature either.

WebTV was designed in the days of SDTV so the webtv browser was not designed for horizontal scrolling. In fact it couldn't horizontally scroll and websites designed for wider screens worked less well on it. But now TV's are HD and widescreen so most sites will work better, unless they're bloated up like CNN Video. (which is also slow on Android Chrome)

But the fact that the WebTV came with a IR keyboard made certain functions easier. For example, it was far far easier to access bookmarks/recents/history on the WebTV because the WebTV keyboard had dedicated keys for certain functions. And as mentioned above easy accessible pgup/pgdown/jumptotop/jumptobottom functionality.

There also doesn't seem to be any "integration" with other features. For example, when you booted up a WebTV and it connected it would take you to your "WebTV home" a partly customizable portal like thing that had news blurbs with topics you chose, weather, links to news about the WebTV service, help info, etc etc. It looked like this:

http://net4tv.com/voice/GRAPHI...

While Silk on TV has a menu/info page with links to news videos and at least some bookmarks it's got nothing like that. Or anything like WebTV's Messenger or Community features (webtv specific newsgroups, USENET and IRC) WebTV wasn't just a browser it was also mail, chat, even some limited video and audio. For example, one could easily send a link via e-mail or send an IM while browsing. Though most things on webtv were treated as special web pages.

For example, WebTV's IRC interface was basically a WebTV hosted webTV specific web page that provided a simple IRC interface. Thusly one could not browse the web or read an e-mail while chatting. (Not taking into account customized IRC pages that could be made) IRC on a webtv looks like this:

http://www.fun-lover.com/webtv...

But as a niche product without a large audience, there wasn't a huge incentive for REAL or Macromedia to help out WebTV to keep up with changing standards. I don't think any WebTV Plus unit got anything better than Flash 5 and the early units were stuck with Flash 3. WebTV users tended to complain a LOT about how WebTV networks weren't keeping up with the changing face of multimedia, especially the ones with the old classic boxes with their 2MB of RAM, 33.6K modems and only 1MB of flash storage. The plus units with their 8MB of RAM, 56K modems, and 1GB hard drives were better.

The Fire stick, however, is a media consumption device even if such functionality is compartmentalized into apps and being backed by Amazon means it keeps up with the internet.

One other thing I noticed is how the Fire stick doesn't use sound like the WebTV did. On a WebTV when you clicked a link, popped up the options menu or the IM thing or hit the bottom of a web page, there were various sound effects.

Ha it looks like Net4TV (once known as Web4TV voice) is still up:

http://www.net4tv.com/voice/in...

Hi there, Just wondering if anybody else remembers the venerable Image Magick Studio? Hours of fun to be had there and definately prior art to anything Web 2.0 :)

"Back that up."
Ok. Take a look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And for more plenty more links to back it up, Google has you covered. Hope that helps.

Bill 602P was proposed to allow the US Postal Service to collect "Alternative Postage" on every email transmitted in the United States. Read about it (Good Writeup Here).

My opinion, FWIW, is to stop voting for these Rousseauian bleeding hearts who believe any form of discretionary income in the hands of the populace needs to be surrendered to the state for proper even distribution. It's a sad, sorry state of affairs but I believe America is waking up. We'll see...

It would also have put them in bed with Microsoft, and exposed all those cable boxes to the bazillions of (circa 1998) windows security vulnerabilities.

You can laugh about "security through obscurity" all you like, but this is obviously the game Hollywood (er, I mean the cable companies) are banking on. It's the way they played it before and all signs are they are counting on the courts and their IP-restrictive laws to protect them again.

Time Warner's worse nightmare is for those 12.5 Million subscribers to have cheap chinese video recorders that would instantly obsolete most of their planned "video on demand" services.

If it were about "not being a store" then all they would have to do is hop in bed with Mild Bill. He's a willing partner and as soon as those cable boxes are running windows the hardware becomes a commodity - but it's a commodity that has to compete on store shelves, which means feature creep that the zoots don't necessarily endorse. They saw what happened when cheap PCs could grok Redbooks CDs and DVDs and they ain't about to take that risk again. That would mean even more court battles, perhaps even some fines for their new "partner" but it won't matter in the end because MS has all the money. And a few million cable subscribers with commoditized, cable optimized tivos that cannot be zombified at the push of a button in Burbank is the kind of scenario that gives Jack and his crew night tremors... especially when their new "partner" could buy and sell the entire fucking city and cast his own "Oscar party."

It's harder than that. You can actually herd cats. Or maybe not.

Just a couple of years ago? Now they decide that they don't want to play with others now.

Here's one of the many stories on it:

http://net4tv.com/voice/Story.cfm?storyID=1693

If you get into a dispute or a lawsuit, you may find that the other side has a lot of revealing information that it will try to use against you. When a shopper slipped and fell in a Von's supermarket, Von's used the records from his Von's Club card to try to show that he bought a lot of liquor and, by implication, was probably a drunk.

When was the last time cookies were used to betray your privacy? They were a big hot nasty item in the near recient past too.

Same page; search for "hotmail." Is it due to cookies alone? No - it's because of misuse and careless application of the technology. Never underestimate the incompetence and corruption of others.

Which isn't to say I've never had a "club card." I have - but it sure didn't have my name on it. And when I used it I paid in cash. And when I moved away it went in the trash.

Which is not to say I have the same irrational fear of RFID as many others. I don't sweat it because :

I always pay cash

and...

I own many hammers

Some other random notes re one of my favorite pet peeves - thanx to the poster for bringing this up :)

• It's been many years since I've received the hard sell for car rental CDW, et al; I'm either lucky, or the sales droids have figured out that AmEx automatically covers CDW. The last time I rented, the sales "agent" did try to sell me the fillup service, $4.99 per gallon to spare me the gross inconvenience of filling up down the street from the airport. Assuming I brought it back empty, that tank of gas would have cost more than the rental itself.
• I came by the aforementioned car in an interesting way. Needed to book a weekend trip DTW --> BWI on two days notice. Best nonstop round-trip coach fare for two people: $1900 thru CheapTickets. Same website, same airline, same flights, plus a car: $560 (of which $90-odd was assorted surcharges). With fare structures like this, how the fsck can the airlines even know whether they make/lose money!?
  (Btw, lesson learned from this trip: don't book flights less than two weeks in advance unless you enjoy being "randomly" searched, repeatedly.)
• Dish Network's first lame attempt at a PVR carried a $10/month charge to use the PVR features. No added features beyond what was built into the box; you paid the $10 solely for the privilege of using the hardware you'd just laid out $600 for. Dish sold maybe a half-dozen of these, unsurprisingly, and the newer/better (and Linux-based!) PVR boxen carry no surcharge.
• Cruises & vacation package ads: Decent price prominently displayed, and beside it in 3-point type: "+ $80", or similar 75% markup. You can't not pay the markup; imho obscuring the actual price this way is damn near fraud.
• ATM fees, and bank surcharges in general: Don't get me going on these.
• Don't know if people outside metro Detroit see these: Car commercials featuring buy/lease prices unattainable by mere mortals. "We'll lease you a brand new fully-equipped (mumble)(mumble) for only $199/month with zero down. . .IF you're already leasing a car from us, AND you're an employee of the manufacturer, AND you won't be moving out of the area anytime soon (seriously), AND you have better credit than God. IOW, the CEO of GeneralDaimlerFord gets this price; you don't. Not so very long ago, TV ads gave the average price quoted by metro area dealers for all sales. Did the law change while I wasn't looking?

DDB (who should be modded up for working Linux into an otherwise-irrelevant topic. :) )

The FCC ordered them to demonstrate iteroperability. They chose their victim.. I mean, partner, to be some dot-com that is now bankrupt and defunct (nice loop-hole spotting, AOL!). I'm trying to find links on this to back this up, and I'll post them here when I find them (just couldn't let this go unanswered).

Keep looking because you are wrong. Here is a link. The FCC only forces them to demonstrate interoperability of advanced IM services which includes Video conferencing and the such. Nothing was set about regular IM. Of course, this agreement lasts for only 5 years and can change at any time.

I dunno if you read the link from that news site, but here's a direct link with more info:
http://net4tv.com/voice/story.cfm?StoryID=1823

A few tidbits:
First, it's a code which is interpreted by the box to send an e-mail to anywhere, automatically. It's intentional. Essentially, it's an e-mail reciept system that has WAY too much power.
Quote:
"The code, which is being embedded in posts in WebTV's alt.discuss newsgroups, emails and web pages, directs any WebTV box that loads the page to send an email message to an address set in the code. The code executes "in the background;" users who have sent the mail do not see any indication of mail being sent, and only find out about it if they receive a reply or look in their Sent Mail folders. "

Since WebTV treats everything as a web page (dumb) it runs this thing every time you look at the page.. Some of these e-mails use another code to keep people from forwarding the e-mail using the webtv box.

In other words, it's not a bug, it's a feature.. The feature from hell. :-)
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