Online Ubiquity

November 24, 2008 — 4 Comments

I’m not quite sure when it happened. Maybe it was when I imported a Chumby so my alarm clock became internet enabled. Maybe it was when we purchased the Macbook for my son + wife (she occasionally brings home a work Windows laptop) so we have 3 laptops in the house (the netbook EeePC is in a draw, too hard to type on, and a pain for WiFi at times) and every night at 9 or 10pm both of us are in bed online. But maybe it was when I hacked the Apple TV (again, the last time it got wiped with an update after 2 days) so our Apple TV now offers more than iTunes + YouTube, and now offers Boxee (which is beautiful) but better still XBMC, which has a pile of plugins for popular streaming sites.

I believe we may have reached online ubiquity.

Louis Gray yesterday wrote that every night he sleeps next to his iPhone. Every night I sleep next to a Macbook Pro, my iPhone and an internet enabled alarm clock, and that’s just my side of the bed. She who must be obeyed has a Blackberry, an iPhone, and a MacBook. My son’s room has an internet enabled DVD player and Wii. The lounge room has an Apple TV. Sadly the Bluray isn’t internet enabled. My office has a variety of things, including a wireless printer, network drive and Mac Pro. Sadly the kitchen doesn’t have a permanent internet enabled device, but I haven’t started looking for Christmas presents yet.

We’ve all but stopped watching broadcast TV. As I type this, my son, home from school is watching YouTube videos on the Apple TV. When my wife gets home if we watch something tonight, the toss up will be bed on a laptop or Apple TV in the lounge room, and the odds of us watching broadcast tv are about twice a week, if that now Australian Idol is finished for the year.

Online ubiquity