Timeshifting: Cram More Into Life 432
jimharris writes "The VCR started it - and then the DVR improved it, so now I want to apply the concept of timeshifting in other ways. I've always wanted an audio cassette player that worked like a VCR so I could listen to more radio talk shows. This morning's NY Times stirred my interest with After TiVo, Radio Rewound about a MP3 device that does just that. Better yet, is Replay Radio - software that is more flexible and you can download the results to a portable player.
I already use Audible.com to squeeze in more books in my life, by listening, rather than reading. I've completed 8 unabridged books in two months just by carrying around my Otis player when I get dressed in the morning, driving to and from work, doing housework, or when I exercise.
Now I'm wondering how I can timeshift even more."
Time compression (Score:5, Interesting)
Me - cynical? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Yes, I checked out the site)
reading while distracted (Score:4, Interesting)
like someone said after "speed reading" War and Peace when asked if he could review it.. "um.. it's about some war, and things."
College students: timeshifting lectures (Score:5, Interesting)
iPod missed a great bit, though -- if they'd included the mp3-recording capabilities (something like the iRiver's hd recorder, or the Ripflash) then I bet that would've caught on VERY quickly. (You go to class today, I'll go tomorrow, we'll exchange mp3s tonight.)
I'd love to record my lectures, but I don't have $400 for an iRiver, and I can't find a minitape recorder that will last for 1.5 hours without stopping and flipping...
eTexts (Score:2, Interesting)
I wish the copy right law could be made more sensible so that Project gutenberg can have more and more of contemprorary literature.
What's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Good idea, actually (Score:3, Interesting)
Does make me wish that the ipod had some more interactive features, though. Like, say, a wireless sync. That way I could just keep sending it new info (such as a text-to-speech version of an RSS feed) all day. Unlike an audio book, I wouldn't mind so much if the news turned into a background drone and I missed some of it.
The idea of taking off my ipod headphones when I set down at the desktop and putting a different set on (and then swapping everytime I want to get up from the machine) is not a good one. I dont even like putting it in the cradle because it's yet another thing I have to do before getting up and walking away.
A good Tivo timeshift trick somebody pointed out to me is to record the early news on a channel where they do one of those crawlers across the bottom of the screen. Then, watch on fast forward.
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I wanna watch... (Score:1, Interesting)
60 + (44 * 23) minutes long = 17.87 hours
Ack! Are you serious? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. We're the first generation to have this much data available to us at all times, but I don't think we've really started to see the true effects of it yet. Just think about how much more media (music, movies, books, etc) we're exposed to than previous generations-- I wonder what the implications of that will be.
I can already, as a musician, see a very big change to music and to how people interact with it. People spend so much less time actually appreciating music than they used to. Just think that, not that long ago, people used to sit down together and listen to a record and do nothing else. You rarely see anybody do anything like that anymore. Hell, most people I know barely finish listening to songs anymore now that they have access to MP3 players.
If you examine other areas of media (news, books, movies, etc), all of this is happening in much the same way. I digest easily 100 times the news in a day that somebody would've 50 years ago, I see at least five movies a week (thank you, Netflix and Suprnova!), etc. Not to mention how many ads I see in any given day.
I think that having all of this information at our fingertips is going to be a double-edged sword. Just like having MP3s around commoditized music, the same will go for all media. And just as search engines/data collection sites (say, for example, Slashdot or Metafilter-- sites that find data for you) became the "killer app" for the web, I guess these "timeshifting" devices, like TiVo, which allow you to collect the data you wish to collect from a given source (i.e. record all episodes of "Arrested Development," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "The World Series of Poker"), will become the "killer app" of their respected medium. I just have to wonder how it will affect us as people and our society as a whole.
Re:Time compression (Score:2, Interesting)
or you could cut out the pauses, and those long annoying fake audience applause/laugh bits which are just filler for jokes you wouldn't get otherwise...
#Note: 43.5 is the minimum allowed length of an hour of tv minus commercials.. 22.5 is the minimum half hour... so you will also note that two half hours is longer than one hour.it used to be 24 and 47 and IIRC once was 26 and 51..
Re:Tivo2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I have a TiVo that spends most of its day recording stuff from BBC7 [bbc.co.uk], a mixture of radio drama and comedy shows. I then have lots of late night listening for those boughts of insomnia. I would never bother listening to these shows if I had to wait for them to come on, the same way as I don't usallly watch any TV live these days. So it makes perfect sense for some radio, just not for recording the breakfast inane chatter every day... (shudder)
Other ways to timeshift (not just audio) (Score:5, Interesting)
By hitting your seat at 7am when the office is empty and quiet you can get more productive sooner, and get more done between 7am and 9am than most people have done by noon.
Let a woman take you clothes shopping, throw out everything in your closet and replace it with whatever she suggests. Make sure everything matches everything else. Time saved : none, but nobody will know you got dressed in the dark before you had caffeine in your system.
Don't sleep in on weekends. Get up at your regular time instead of 11am and you have effectively doubled the number of hours of daylight you get on each weekend day. God I love to sleep in so I hate this one.
Get your news from FARK (www.fark.com) In the hour it takes to watch the news on TV you could have a synopsis of the important events around the globe from a hundred different news sources. If it is newsworthy, it's on FARK.
Cancel your MMORPG accounts (stop playing Everquest). This will give you back 1000 hours per year. Maybe more.
I timeshift my movie rentals (Score:3, Interesting)
I dont always have the time or inclination to go to the movie rental store, and face the possibility that a movie I want to see has been rented by someone else already.
So whenever I happen to be near the store, I go browse the movies that interest me, and rent a few.
When I get home, if I dont have time to watch them within the rental time frame, I rip them to my HD until I can watch them, then I delete the rip.
Re:Damn, Unplug and take a walk (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, at the end of the week when I get everything back, I'm so used to enjoying the quiet that I don't put it all back right away. I fish my cel phone out right away, but the tv remote languishes for a few days, the network cards and powercords come out, but the PDA and the game controllers sit a while longer.
Timeshifting != Multitasking (Score:3, Interesting)
Multitasking would be doing several things at once, such as listening to an audio book while jogging. This is pretty common, and anybody who has a busy job knows what it's like. A coworker follows you into the men's room to chat at the urinal. You print something out before getting up to go get coffee so that you can use the time while you wait for the printout to finish. And so on. Hardly a new idea.
Timeshifting would be manipulating one of those tasks that you might not have been able to in the past. Besides Tivo and ReplayRadio, I'd suggest that the whole RSS aggregator phenomenon fits into that category. You used to spend X minutes visiting Y sites every day. Now you spend 1/10th that time by putting them all under your nose simultaneously. It's not like you're doing 10 things at once, you're not visiting 10 sites at the same time -- you're cramming more valuable info into your web browsing time.
Or how about those elevators that have a CNN newsfeed in them? Sure, technically it's multitasking, giving you something to do with otherwise down time (or I suppose up time depending on which floor you're going to :)). But it's also time manipulation in that you used to be limited to "Watch news in the morning before going to work." Now you get to take it with you up to the office. Of course I could make the opposite argument that you're not manipulating it, as anybody that's seen this setup knows. It asks a trivia question, then you have to wait 30 seconds, and you end up on your floor before you see the answer and you get all cranky.
Re:Other ways to timeshift (not just audio) (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to point out that you can avoid traffic also by going late to work and heading home late in the evening or even at night. It'll work fine, if your employer is flexible (i.e. trusts that you do you job even when the boss is not around) and especially if you live in an urban area where you can get food 24h/day.
I used to start working at 11 am and work late into the night. I can't get anything useful done before 10 am and I'm at my peak performance somewhere around 4-5 pm, but these days I have to drag myself to work by 9 am. Thank you very much, you morning people who insist on scheduling meetings early in the morning.
I made a radio "VCR", and it's easy. Try it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Total cost: $0.
It's been working now for about a week, and already I love it. I can listen to Car Talk and Marketplace whenever I please. I'm saving up a bunch of Fresh Air interviews to listen to on a car trip.
Since a modern hard drive can store about 5 years of compressed talk radio, I don't think I'll need to "change the tape" any time soon. ;-)
Re:Damn, Unplug and take a walk (Score:2, Interesting)
Up next, shorten your time with timestretching!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Timestretching!! By cranking up the speed at which you watch something while keeping the audio pitch sane, you can drop a good 25% (or more, if you feel *X-TREME*) from your viewing time. And if you think I'm joking, check out this winDVD page [intervideo.com] where they outline their timestretching tech. Pop in a DVD, and use your choice of "finish by a specific time" or "finish within a certain amount of time." And voila, suddenly everything takes 25% less time. Which leaves you able to catch up on all those anime reruns your tivo has been accumulating while you were busy watching the Daily Show.
It's important, or something. Who knows.
Re:Other ways to timeshift (not just audio) (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in '99, I got a job where I can show up any time between 9 and 11, and as long as I work my 8 hours, the bosses are happy.
If I'm working on something late, or if I have tennis practice later at night... you know, something that makes me extra-tired, I just sleep in the next morning, as long as I feel it's necessary...
The result?
On the weekends, I tend to get up earlier than on the weekdays. I think it's getting better sleep because there is no knowledge of having to go to work the next day... and also the fact that I'm pretty *rested* already with the flex schedule that I have.
If you feel like sleeping in on the weekends, maybe you should - your body is trying to tell you it needs more rest. Listen to it!
What good is an extra hour of being awake if you're just going to zombie through the next 15?
Re:Other ways to timeshift (not just audio) (Score:2, Interesting)
I would second this. My most productive working time during the day is from 3-7pm, and at night frequently midnight-5am.
Just now I have a client who insists on a 9am start, so I insist on a 5pm finish. It means I don't worry about the client's job outside these hours, and they don't get the most productive hours of my day, but I wonder if they realise just how much productivity they are losing.
To quote a friend: Visbility != Productivity
(Anyway, back to the proposal I'm supposed to be writing).
Re:why timeshift? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. I think the world would be better if people crammed more "life" into "stuff" rather than vice-versa. (That said, there needs to be an understanding of what constitutes "life" in this context.)
2. I would argue that it does matter how much non-edifying stuff you put in your life. Note I didn't say "non-productive", because productivity is not the issue here. The question is, how much do we put in our lives that can't improve the Condition of Man - and by that I don't mean better health care or "standard of living" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean anyway). I mean things that don't give us a more hopeful outlook on our life and the lives of those around us. I don't mean "make people happy" either - I really do genuinely mean "give people hope."
That, I think, is the crux of the "does technology really improve people's lives" debate.
Re:forget timeshift. (Score:3, Interesting)
Using a PVR for talk radio makes about as much sense as printing hard copies of Slashdot discussions.
timeshift schmimeshift (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Other ways to timeshift (not just audio) (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's the sadists that schedule morning meetings -- gets the night owls up too early and interrupts the flow of the morning persons work day; everybody is surly.
Re:Oh boy (Score:2, Interesting)
Recording Loveline (Score:1, Interesting)
Shifting Movies (Score:2, Interesting)
I find Netflix to be a cheap way of shifting all those movies I always meant to see. The service allows you me to load up my queue with 100's of movies in any order I like. Then they send me the movies. After I watch one and mail it back they send me another one. I am catching up on 10 - 20 movies a month this way.
The best aspects of time shifting in using netflix are that I can rent blockbusters and bombs at the same low cost. If I saw a trailer for a movie I thought would be good but never got around to, I can watch it while coding or eating dinner. I can also watch the bad movies in fast forward just to see what made it so bad. That saves alot of time (and money) compared to trying to catch every movie in the theater.
In 6 months with the service I have caught up on golden era classics, AFI top 100 flicks, explored anime titles oft mentioned on Slashdot, and seen all those big budget flops from recent years. And best of all, I saw them when I wanted to.
VCR capabilities for Radio (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, I answered my own question (with a tiny bit of help from Google). Media Forte [mediaforte.com.sg] makes a couple of FM-tuner PCI cards and bundle software that records, too. The description says Linux-compatible (drivers?), though the bundled software looks Windows-only.
Re:Faster MP3s (Score:2, Interesting)
I have an idea. (Score:3, Interesting)
Tivo-Radio (Score:2, Interesting)
I grab copies of my favorite radio shows, or just grab a few hours of music off any one station. Streamripper's ability to separate title tracks falls apart slightly at the beginning of the song, but it'll numerically order them.
Thus, any show, just about any format, can be sucked off a stream and stored for your listening convenience. And I'll stuff them onto a flash or hard disk player and haul them home. I'd guess someone else can figure out how to timeshift an mp3, I'm sure it's in here somewhere.
Re:Time compression (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone else practice this?