Have you ever seen anything like that like oh, oh, it looks like it's getting bigger
Too big for us. Maybe we should call on the rest of BAI
They should know something good idea. We can meet
We better meet away from the station just in case that thing is contagious or something. I know a place
56 Walker Street a couple blocks down from canal. We could just figure out a date and time
Looks like we have a little time. It doesn't seem to be moving too fast. I don't think that'll get here until late November
And you're listening to radio station WBA I the time is just about seven o'clock time once again for off the hook
While shaving
I
I
I
Think I've been putting this off the hook manuals in here with you on this Wednesday evening joined tonight by Mike
Program is um off the hook. You don't know the name. Yeah, you know, I'm very flustered today Mike
It's it's been a rough day off the hook. Yes any other critiques for this early on in the hour
It's only been a minute. I'm sure I can call it a second. Okay, Mike that it's enough from you and Jim is here
Hello, and down Philadelphia is Bernie s greetings from Philadelphia out in Seattle was Kyle
well
Okay, where do I start? Well, first of all, first of all a couple of things today was the day of the
of the dramatic emergency alert system
Test a nationwide test Bernie. Can you maybe describe for the folks what this is all about? Wow. Yeah, it's it's sort of a
successor to the old
Emergency broadcast system like this is a test
This is only a test of this has been a real emergency now that kind of a thing
It's been going on since the you know, since the I think 1950s
but this the new incarnation of it the emergency alert system is designed to allow
Local state and federal authorities reach the public through mass media
On mass and this particular test today was the first
nationwide
emergency alert system test it was set up to be from the White House and
Supposed to be three minutes to most TV and radio stations and cable and satellite stations, but
It was cut down to 30 minute 30 seconds from three minutes and it was
Responsibility was handed over to FEMA the Federal Emergency Management
Administration maybe for political reasons
I don't know and I think the commercial broadcasters probably didn't want three minutes of commercial airtime being used up for something so trivial
So, um, but I monitored you monitor it
What did you think I monitored in a few places? I can tell you did not work here at WB AI
We did not get the signal. I
Heard it on a couple of other non-commercial stations. I was I had CNN on it did not come across on CNN
and
But of course I was watching CNN on a Canadian dish. So maybe that's something to do with it
I was watching a Los Angeles television station and came across there with no sound
And
Well, you know what? I saw so much you can do in 30 seconds
I wasn't able to monitor a short time window test. Did you listen to any radio stations while you were doing this?
Yes, I had I had WCBS on in the background a.m. Station
And they they aired it pretty much at 2 o'clock. The thing I thought was interesting was it wasn't all instantaneous or simultaneous, right?
It was it was basically different different times
Yeah, I was tuning twiddling through an analog a.m.
And FM radio dial like just scanning through the stations
Manually with a knob and I was really surprised to find most stations on the air were not
Rebroadcast we're not broadcasting the emergency alert system test and I was flipping through I was at my aunt's house
Flipping through cable TV channels because I don't have a TV at my home
So I was flipping through cable channels and and most of them even broadcast channels
You know, which are like we you know, we transmitted over cable. We're not carrying it as well
I did land on a PBS affiliate here at WVA I WV I a
Which is a PBS affiliate up here and they were broadcasting. It was the only station I found was broadcasting
Audio with the video and the audio was horribly distorted
Like it was like like a radio that wasn't missed wasn't tuned properly or something
Well, what happened in the past is the first nationwide test
I haven't statewide test and what what has happened in the past
Is that a station will relay to another station and to another station and by the time it gets to about the eighth station?
It's barely audible because so many generations have passed by so maybe you were hearing something like that
Yeah, there what what the emergency alert system has done since in recent couple years
set up in different feeds
Set up a
Satellite feeds both both redundant uplinks and downlinks and also last year they put into into effect a an XM
Satellite radio feed as well down downlink
So, you know to get around from that used to be the real only like a few dozen
PEPs like point of entry
Stations that would that would rebroadcast the main signal from the source to other radio stations
Like you said like a daisy chain thing, but with all these redundant sources of signal now you would think
Test would have gone. Well, I was very unimpressed. I thought I thought it was a failure personally
Yeah, well, you know while we were speaking Bernie for you might have heard some clicks on the phone
I know what that's all about
But this printer in the back just printed out something and I think that's got something to do with the emergency alert system
Yeah, it's alerting us to something you want to read
But I should I take tear off the thing you're allowed to read what it says and we have to log it
Yeah tear off the tape and we'll log it in the official logs
But do tell the fire. I think the folks have a right to know what is coming across
It's this system. Just read the last part
The last section or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, it says
Obscenities, please. Don't read those. It says alert received at
1109 11 at 1906 31 which was just a couple minutes ago
Yeah on monitor number one a broadcast station or cable system has issued a required weekly test
For Bronx Kings, New York Queens and Richmond County's, okay
So that's our required weekly test, which has never aired before during our show just happened to air while we were talking about no
No, it begins at 8 or 6 p.m
Yeah, but it just happened. Well, it's let me tell you what time it's not and that's 806
Somebody did not turn their clock back. All right, it's pretty obvious what that's all but it also says it ends at 906
I don't believe in an hour-long test, you know, nobody really knows what's going on
But what do I do with this now on that?
Well, you have to hold on to it because you ripped it off the the official thing there. You're now responsible for it
I'm glad I didn't do that
so anyway, a
Couple of things with this and I don't want to spend too much time on this because we have so many other things to talk
About tonight, but I understand there are some
Problems with some cable systems that are unable to tell people that it's a test
That's this the story that I read said that they were worried that that blind people
Might not know they might just hear the sound and they might not know that it actually was a test because apparently
or deaf people
handicapped people in general
Might not know that that this isn't real. So it's you heard anything quite so so kludgy Bernie
No, I mean almost all all the cable channels that I scanned across
That I found were broadcasting the test had no audio. It was just just a video screen
So I think it's silly
I think if you know sightless people sight-impaired people should be able to hear that there is a test going on and or that there's
A real emergency. I mean, this is ridiculous
Well, but what do you think of the broader implications of something where the White House now has the ability assuming the thing works?
to
to reach a large percentage of the population immediately through all these
TV radio cable and satellite channels. I mean that this I think has potential for abuse
But on the other hand, I think it could be important if there really was a real emergency
Well as a question of who it is that you want to trust and how many how many?
Individuals do you want to give the ability or how many entities going to give the ability to override?
Everybody's a Big Brother broadcast or whatever it is. They're doing with with mass media
I found the part that I was referring to they say that the concern among cable television systems is that
hard of hearing viewers
Might be alarmed because some cable systems unlike broadcast and satellite TV
Cannot superimpose a visual warning saying this is a test over the government's graphic
Instead they will only see the scrolled message
this is an emergency action notification which gives no visual indication that it's just a test and I cannot believe after all this time of
Hysteria and mayhem and and worrying about catastrophes that we haven't figured out a way to superimpose something that says this is a test
but apparently that's
That's where we are. Also, this is moving forward in the future
apparently
all kinds of devices
Will be able to to receive such tests in the future
mobile phones pagers all kinds of other things
there's an integrated system that supposedly nine months away and is going to be tested in New York City and
Eventually the rest of the country wait, so if I'm like outside walking around as I actually was at 3 p.m
Today 2 p.m. 2 p.m. Probably nobody knows that there was an emergency test. Yeah, no one told me so but so you're saying someone
What my phone would have just instantly alerted me that there was a test emergency
Assuming you have it on. Yes. Yes, you can turn phones off. Well, yeah, I'll show you how later
Kyle out there in Seattle. Did you hear any screaming in the streets?
No, I didn't hear any screaming in the streets, although I I had
Kxp on the radio in the kitchen tuned in and I was listening to that and I also was
Streaming BAI later on. So I I think between the two of them. I did catch this
Fame test
Well now if you're listening to BAI and hoping for an emergency you were disappointed because it didn't come across here. Okay, so every reason
I think that was accurate too because I tuned in to BAI later
I'm pretty sure it was the radio in the kitchen that I heard that on I was listening to a local community station out here
Kxp Mike don't fold that piece of paper. That's that's an official government document. You're holding there. I won't all right
I was just wondering if it said anything about this morning's test and it it doesn't know because we never got this morning and it
Wasn't this morning? It was this afternoon 2 o'clock. It was this morning in Seattle where Kyle is but you're not
All right, let's let's let's move on speaking of of someone not telling someone something
This this finally happened to me. I knew it was gonna happen someday, but it finally happened. I
Was driving yesterday. I was driving yesterday afternoon and I noticed it was getting dark and I realized you know
it's why is it getting dark now, it seemed a little early to be getting dark and
that's when I
Realized I actually talking somebody on the phone
Which I know isn't legal, but I was doing it
Anyway, I found out that daylight savings time ended over the weekend and I didn't know about it and everything was automated every single clock
Every single device that I have knew to turn the clock back an hour
So I went lifely through three days without realizing that this had happened because there was absolutely nothing to tell me
Unless you know, I was I was listening to newscast about it or reading articles
Which I wasn't doing because I was busy working on something else
So for the first time and I knew this was coming last year. The only device in my house was an analog clock
Well that analog clock broke this year and I replaced it with a nice digital clock that gets its its time from WWV and has
Celsius temperature from outside
So that clock was intelligent enough to turn back the clock an hour on its own without telling me anything
I went through three days without knowing what about your microwave? I don't keep the time on my microwave
I don't see the point in that at all
My phone knew to turn back
Every single VCR that still works and every single VCR. Yeah a cable box all those things
So, you know, I just wonder what else can they can they slyly change without people realizing it?
can they make Monday into Sunday, you know and just
Shift things around it's kind of kind of frightening when something happens so transparently not even aware of it Emanuel
Yes, you may remember I was about four or five years ago that President George W Bush
Changed the time we're supposed to spring forward and fall back for for daylight savings
Yeah
and that's too damn much power for any one person to have either to be able to actually change the hands of time or worse than
That some devices like I have one of these
Watches that also receives a
WWVb the 60 kilohertz signal from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Fort Collins, Colorado
like your clock does and
But the date that the date that it's supposed to change is hard-coded into the ROM on this
microcontroller on this watch
So I have to wait about three weeks
For unless I want to manually change the time on my watch and then manually change it back three weeks from now
I'm stuck with this legacy of the George W. Bush administration or strapped around my wrist. It's very annoying
Yeah, that is that is something
But anyway, we're we're on standard time now. I wish we'd stay on standard time. I don't see any reason to be moving hours around
So yeah, I disagree. I don't understand why we're wasting daylight
We should be saving it now when there's so little of it to go around
All right. Well you save it on your own and spend it later. I don't care
It's just when you move clocks around people
It is fun though to make appointments with people for an hour that never happens like yeah
I'll meet you at 2 a.m. On Saturday, and that's the day that they jump ahead to 3 a.m
So there is no 2 a.m. You know, it's show them you could just say I don't want to meet with you
Yeah, that usually follows later on yesterday was Election Day. Did anybody know I went to vote?
Yeah, I went to vote too. And once again, it was the clumsiest system
I've ever seen when nobody knew what was going on. Everyone felt like they didn't really vote
Basically at the end it feels like you sent the fax, but you're not sure anybody actually did you have anything to vote for?
I had things to vote against and I kind of all right, so that's more than I had. Yeah, I had
In New York City where I lived there were elections for some judges and there were five
Slots and there were five candidates and I voted for four of them just for fun
But I suspect the fifth will still win also
I just make it a point to not vote for anybody who's running both Democrat and Republican and just to vote for anybody else
Because that's the ultimate in corruption. I think I don't know
I showed up at 7 20 p.m. And was informed that I was the ninth voter to arrive that day Wow, so they were very busy
I can imagine Bernie any any adventures down in Philadelphia
But you sound like getting out of the area now, in fact you're fading oh, okay
Yeah, go back to the phone
There was a very light turnout up here in Luzern County, Pennsylvania
Luzer beautiful. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait. What's the name of this County Luzern County?
Okay. Well, I like the
Like the city in Switzerland Lucerne, it's not spelled the same way spelled with a Z. Yeah, that's how they spell it
You're over there over there over here. We spell there is with a C. It's very confusing. It's or
Switzerland, yeah, no, but in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Swiss. Is that something that no
Anyway, so you're upstate Pennsylvania
With the most beautiful possible day you could imagine it still was a very light turnout
But they got a new district attorney up here in Luzern County. So that's that's refreshing. Yeah, I kick the old ones out
They they get too much power
Okay
So yeah election day that was that was something that if you blinked you might have missed it
But something's coming up first of all, I'm about to speak about dates, but
Does anybody realize that this emergency alert test came on 9-eleven?
If you if you keep dates like they do in Europe today is the ninth day of November
So they write that 9 slash 11. Do you think that was a coincidence?
Yes, okay. I
Have nothing else to talk about them
but the date I do want to mention though is one that's coming up in just two days and that is the 11th day of
November now, that's
Veterans Day or Remembrance Day a lot of people pause at 11 o'clock in the morning and in England for instance
But what's interesting about this particular one?
this is something that will never happen again in our lifetimes is that the
Two-digit year the two-digit month the two-digit date are all the same number 11 11 11
That's you can't name a date the way that's ever happened before
Can you go ahead like 10 10 10? Yeah, you see 1 and 0 are two different numbers
So you can't you know different and and 9 9 9 people didn't write 9 they wrote 0 9
So you know, but it will happen again in 13 months
When no, I'm sorry
No
It won't because 11 11 is the same in both season here the next time it will happen will be in a year 22 22 and
Yeah, wait in the 22nd month of that year. Yeah, you see it's not gonna happen then either
Your whole theory goes out the window. No, it's never gonna happen again. That's my point
It's a unique thing and I hope that everybody's, you know planning something really special for that
Okay
You might remember I?
Certainly do last time I entered this country. I had a bit of trouble Kyle. I think you were there. Yeah. All right, and
I got fed up with it because every time I come into the country whether it's from Canada whether it's from
Europe or from outer space or wherever it is I get
Basically searched and questioned and I finally filed a complaint with Department of Homeland Security
This
This was back in September that I did this
and
they gave me a page to check my status I'd enter my control number and I checked to see what was happening and
For a while. It said in process DHS has received your application along with the required identification documents and the signed privacy statement
We are currently reviewing the submission to determine if the delays are caused by incorrect information or mistaken identity
We will also coordinate with other federal agencies as appropriate to make this determination and to correct any errors
I'd mailed them all kinds of things
well
About a little over a week ago that changed and the message read status closed
DHS has completed its review of your submission a letter was forwarded to you at the address provided in your application
Well, nothing has arrived in the mail
It's been well over a week since this notice was posted and I just wonder what this means
It's just is this where it ends where they say they mailed me something and I never get it
And I have to start all over again and go through this this hoop one more time
That's that's where it stands
So the weird thing about this process is that if you can show you're not the person they're looking for then then they do something
For you, but if you are the person they're looking for then even if they shouldn't be looking for you. You have no
Means for appeal. Well, at least I I know why they're looking for me supposedly. I don't think they're gonna tell you that well
Okay, then I want to see the letter that says yeah, I can't harass you every time you come into the country
We're not gonna tell you why maybe they lose all those letters on purpose
Well, I'll give it some more time and I'll tell you what we're not on next week
We're on two weeks, but when I get that letter if I get the letter tomorrow
I'm gonna hold on to it and not even open it till we're on the air. I'll open it live on the air
How's that for suspense very dramatic if we ever had a live envelope opening on this radio program?
Yeah, we've done some dramatic things. What's that Bernie?
There might be anthrax in the envelope. They mail to you. You really think DHS would
Stoop to that level. Well, the little anthrax anthrax came courtesy of the US government. So they don't like me very much
Anyway, so that's that's where that stands. And of course, so keep everybody updated as far as that goes
Okay, you might have heard something on the internet
If you if you read the internet, you might have seen something on our page about some interesting events that are happening this coming weekend
We're gonna take a trip down memory lane like we've never done before
Basically, what's going to happen?
Is that we're going to revisit an event and historic event that took place in our history?
And I think I believe Bernie you were there for this. I was there
Somehow you know what I'm gonna say. Yes, and Jim you were there as well. And
I think that's that's pretty much it for people people that are on this show right now
I'm talking about the first hackers on planet Earth conference took place in August of
1994 it was two days long. It had one speaker track
It was the first time in this country that a major hacking event like this had taken place
There are plenty of tiny hacker conventions of say a hundred maybe 150 people
this was the first one that had over a thousand and it was based on the
The events that had taken place in other countries specifically the Netherlands
So what we're doing this weekend
we've we've basically gone through our archives and found a whole lot of material that we
Feared might have been lost
We've digitized we've remastered we've put together
The videos from that particular conference and what we're going to be doing
Starting Saturday afternoon at the very time that the conference began on that Saturday afternoon back in August 1994
We're going to be releasing it on the internet hour by hour
So the 12 o'clock talk will be released at noon. The one o'clock talk will become live at 1 p.m
we're going to do that all weekend long from about noon to midnight each day because those are the hours that we had and
For those of you who were there, it's gonna be an amazing trip down memory lane for those of you who weren't it's going to
Be really
Revealing you you'll see a bunch of us looking much younger
You'll see all kinds of interesting talks about things like say a new operating system known as Linux
an upcoming film known as hackers
all kinds of
Technological issues that we might laugh at now because they might seem so primitive or maybe things that never happened things that never got developed
So basically we're doing this starting at noon and at the same time the same time noon on Saturday
We're also going to be offering tickets to the next hope conference the next hope conference being hope number nine
Taking place July 13 14 and 15. We're having a very limited number of half-price tickets. That'll be available
you'll see all that on the website, but
We're going we're going through a service that you might have heard of
to release these these videos known as blip TV blip TV and I have
Two co-founders of blip TV right here in the studio with us when I welcome Justin day and Jared Klett to the studios
Welcome guys
Let me turn your mic on this only polite for me to do that
so now
We basically and Kyle. I know you've been instrumental in getting this to work
We picked you guys to host these videos
Kyle what would you say is the reason that that we did that?
I'm mainly because we wanted to be able to syndicate the content and a variety of different
places and
basically integrate some social networking and and other features, but I
Don't know it
basically offered a lot more flexibility just to have an account and
Get things up there and and and visible to people
Well YouTube has a whole lot of videos out there of every little thing that you could imagine in life
And most of them are rather short and the quality isn't all that good
I'll let our guests explain the concept behind blip TV. How you guys see yourself as as different from say the mainstream
Sure, I mean we we got our start around the same time as YouTube we went a bit of a different direction
We wanted to be a very open
platform
We always allowed the user to download the original files that they uploaded
That was a big selling point for a lot of people
That they felt, you know secure about giving us their media and we didn't you know, take any rights to their
Content or anything else and there was a big flap
In kind of mid 2005 if I remember correctly on the video blogging mailing list about
YouTube's terms of service and how they would say basically we reserve the right to you know
Take your stuff and rebroadcast it or any company that follows this company, etc, etc, etc
So, you know and the rest is history, I mean we've you know grown very organically we're a privately held company
we've always kind of stuck to those principles and
you know just
Developed this this business on
You know kind of that same, you know set of principles
What was involved in getting the project off the ground in the first place?
You know, there were there were four of us and in the beginning. We added a fifth founder myself and Justin and
Mike and Charles and Dina and
You know, we just kind of bootstrapped it, you know off of our, you know credit cards for a year
Until we said oh, you know, we've really got something here. So we raised a small, you know angel round
And we just kind of you know, went went from there. We all quit our day jobs about a year
Into the project and that was kind of scary
But we were just doing nights and weekends for a long haul for a long time. Uh-huh. Now what kinds of people or
Companies organizations have have come to blip
Um
We we kind of run the gamut. I mean, it's a you know, like I said initially it was just individuals doing video blogs
you know that that was really cool to see kind of those conversations happening and
Eventually, you know people whole companies were being started around creating content
You know this, you know, the concept of a web series came out, you know
There was an alternative television and we saw everyone from you know
a couple of guys out in Chicago like doing this, you know as a labor of love all the way up to
Somebody like Michael Eisner, you know backing this company to like produce this content. So
It really kind of ran the gamut, but we served everyone the same, you know
We didn't say oh you're Michael Eisner. So, you know you get you know this extra feature or something, you know
We treated everybody the same way. So I've seen some some web episodes
Webisodes, I guess is what you call them of various shows. Are they are they produced only for blip TV?
They're about maybe 10 minutes long and they seem to have quite a following
We don't ever enter a kind of any exclusivity agreements
You know if people are uploading their video to us, that's great if they're using us, you know as their main player
That's great. If they're also also uploading to YouTube or Vimeo or wherever that's fine, too
You know, I don't think but a lot of people, you know, they do release on us exclusively by their own choice
Well, I I know that one of the reasons why we chose blip was because we were able to put a whole video up in
The first place YouTube has a limit of I think 10 or 15 minutes and that you know
In order for us to put even one talk up there have to be about four or five parts to it and that really gets kind
Of clumsy after a while, especially when you're dealing with a whole bunch of talks even this first conference
we only have I think 18 talks total, but some of the later ones have up to a hundred and
You know have four or five parts for each one of those it would just it would be insane
So it's good to be able to just click on something and play the entire thing and have it look pretty decent at the same
time
Yeah, we
That was a decision, you know, we kind of made early on
We saw YouTube go to the 10-minute limit and we understood why they did it
you know is to prevent people from uploading copyrighted material and things like that and you know, we
Would just cut you know, we would just kind of remove that stuff as we saw it
You know on the site and was never really a problem for us
you know, we kept the site really clean and
Generally just made it an inhospitable place for anybody that wanted to you know, commit that kind of copyright
Infringement not that YouTube ever had a problem with copyright. Oh, right, of course
So have you gotten much in the way of media exposure?
As far as because everyone talks about YouTube and you know that the YouTube phenomenon how how it helped topple
Dictatorships and things like that and I don't hear the same thing about blip and you think you guys could
Could also be credited with some things like that. Well, I think we've taken a little bit of a different approach
I mean our whole focus is on independent web series producers and we've gotten some media coverage for being about that and I think
you know the online video space is starting to
settle into several niches and and web series as being one of them and
I think we're a great tool because we because we focus so much on the web series producer and just building things for them
So we've gotten a little bit of press here and there but yeah, obviously we're not the behemoth that that is Google or YouTube
Now, how does somebody get started with your service, what would they what would they do in order to start producing their own episodes?
You just go to the go to the site blip.tv
And sign up make an account
fill out all your details so that we know about your show because somebody will take a look at it and
rate it and categorize it and
you know set it up for advertising and
Then start uploading episodes and somehow you guys are tied into all kinds of other things to like Tevo
and I was Kyle and I saw
TV on a television set
Yeah, we just saw blip.tv on there that's we'd have time to really check it out
But what kinds of capabilities does that give you and and the people contributing sure
So we're on we're on a number of set-top boxes like Sony Rabia sets and Roku boxes and on Tevo
you know each one of those is the the integrations are very very different from one another so
You're likely to see
You know, very very varied experiences
But on a lot of them like Roku you can get get your series on there and people can dial you up on their TV
and watch
very cool
Where do you see this going? I mean, I imagine things have been around for five years now
Things must have changed quite a bit in that a period of time
So I imagine the future all kinds of things are going to be happening. Yeah, as Justin said we
You know you can
Enable advertising on your show and you we split the revenue 50-50 with the producer
we pay out every month and
You know, we've seen some of our larger shows and networks, you know, really start to make good living and
You know build sustainable businesses on this so it's really just kind of you know
Building on that success and having you know, more shows come on, you know and kind of fostering that
Ecosystem where you know, we have independent original web series being produced on any subject, you know, it runs the gamut
You know, you don't have to have advertising enabled. That's fine
but you know, we we definitely see kind of this I
Get I hate to use the term but long tail, you know coming out, you know
We we have you know, the very like high and you know high earning shows, you know running advertising at this end
And then at the other end, you know
There's a very niche set of content that may only have like a hundred user hundred viewers
Per episode but you know, they get the same quality experience that these high-end guys do and that's I think that's very valuable
Now do you get much content from from different countries or is it pretty much mostly United States?
Yeah
We one of our longest and largest running shows is actually from China
But we we see a lot of content from South America a lot from Europe I
Can't really think of any others on the top of my head South Korea Oh South Korea, right now you go to blip TV
How would you say if you wanted to see Chinese shows? How would you go around go about looking for them? A
Lot of that stuff the series producer kind of handles their own promotion
And what they'll do is they'll they'll take our player and embed it on their own site
And they're actually able to brand the player with their own
Name and link and everything so people don't even know necessarily know that it's us
Hosting it and doing the ads and those sorts of things
So that allows us on our destination site to really focus on the stuff that we think
Sort of the audiences were more familiar with the US UK audiences
That's sort of the more the more of the stuff that you'll feature on blip TV, you know proper
We were really excited about going through all the the history
and
seeing some of these conferences and
being able to share with people I think is
Is
Just really really an important and inspiring
Project so we really appreciated the
way we're kind of experimenting with some of these like ways of syndicating it and and
Anyway, I don't know. It's been pretty pretty smooth. We really enjoyed
the
process of getting it
Going. Yeah, we are we are going to be doing this with all the conferences
We're trying to roll them all out maybe one per month
If we can keep up to that because they do get bigger and bigger and we want to see how this one goes
Saturday what that's going to roll it out. You'll see it on our website either hope.net or 2600 calm
and it'll also be a
Cool way to test this this service blip TV, which you know, I've heard about in the past
but I hadn't really had any interaction with not knowingly anyway, like you guys say it could be embedded on someone's site and you won't even
know that
Someone is using your service
now
Do you have plans for?
New projects or expansion or anything that maybe might be different than what others are doing. I
Mean, we're definitely growing. We're continuing to
Build upon our platform and build out new features new functionality. We're actually hiring
We need people so look at our careers page
What kind of people are you looking for?
developers QA people systems engineers
Just technical folks of all sorts
Cool, and you're based here in New York based here in New York. Yeah. Awesome something about your background how you got into this in the first
place
I moved to
New York City in 1999 and I met
our fellow co-founder Charles Hope and
He introduced me to his name is Charles Hope Charles Hope. Oh, that's perfect. I honestly did not know that wow, that's incredible
Okay. Yeah, he he got me into a mailing list called the New York City geeks and we would meet every two weeks or so
For Indian food in the East Village somewhere and that's always a good start. Yeah, it was it was a fun list
It was a lot of you know, you know discussion about you know, technical stuff a lot of politics things like that
Justin came to one of those dinners
I met him and we met Mike and that was kind of how we all got together was this mailing list?
yeah, yeah, and then we'd spend spend nights and weekends just hacking on different stuff coming up with different ideas and
Blips kind of the one that's stuck. There were a lot of projects before blip
Now have you been faced with some huge corporation wanting to buy you out or has Google approached you yet?
Um, we've we've certainly had huge corporations name us in lawsuits, but oh tell us about those that's that's more interesting
No, it's it's it's all been pretty benign we were we were named in a patent lawsuit a while back and
They got thrown out in relatively short order. The the patent was so ridiculous
It was like uploading a file to a web server and who tried to grab that patent was it?
We know or it was a company called like easy net or easy web some patent troll
Kind of thing but um, I don't think we've we've ever really been
Approached that significantly about acquisition. We've we've had discussions, but we've never gotten to you would know more about that
Yeah, so we've had we've had talks about about but I get you guys want to keep running the ship yourself at least for the
immediate future
Yeah, we've we've never you know been we've never really shopped the company around that's never really been an interest for us
you know to me being able to you know,
Build stuff and hack on stuff that millions of people use every day is like the greatest job that I could ever want
What advice might you give to people that are just starting out have ideas?
Thinking of starting some kind of company on the internet anything that maybe they could learn from your experience
I'd say just start just start doing stuff start putting it out there. Don't wait to make it perfect. Don't wait
Until you have just the right feature set or whatever
Just put it out there and see what people think chances are your assumptions are wrong. Anyway, and you need that feedback
cool
Justin you're part of
NYC resistor. Yep. We found that out before the show. That's a part of a hacker space over in in Brooklyn. Yep
that kind of environment I guess is conducive to
Creativity and innovation. Yeah, certainly. I mean, you know blip predates NYC resistor a little bit but
That group has certainly fostered other startups and other great projects
Cool. You guys want to give any kind of contact info?
We're gonna go to some phone calls and you're welcome to stick around and talk to our listeners if they have any questions for
You or on anything else, but how do people?
Find blip and I mean anything else you just want to share
You can just go to the site blip.tv and our email addresses are just our first names
You know Jared at blip.tv and Justin at blip.tv. Yeah, we like email
Alright, you know, I'm really looking forward to this weekend. I don't know if this is something that happens often where
Something like this is is debuted to great fanfare. I'm not sure if there'll be great fanfare
hopefully there will be but for us, you know, just being able to have a timed release like this that actually you have a
Setup on your system where you can say, okay, we released this video at 2 p.m. On
Saturday November the 12th and it'll presumably get released at exactly that time and
It's just kind of a cool thing to be able to say. Wow. This talk is now happening as it happened back in 1994
17 years ago, I imagine there's all kinds of other possible things you could do
You're basically episodic as far as the the videos released
So you could make a make a series yourself at your house or in your office or something like that?
And just put them all in the can and release them week by week or day by day at a particular time and publicize that
That's that alone is a cool feature. I think yeah
I mean that some of our most popular shows are people that are literally doing that. Mm-hmm. Very cool
any kind of restrictions as far as
But you have any length restriction at all or no, you have to keep the files under a gig. Okay?
That's it. Oh pretty cool
so blip.tv and again, we'll be
putting blip.tv slash 2600 magazine is our
Page on there right now. It has nothing because we haven't released anything
But on Saturday, you're gonna see that start to come to life and all kinds of other things as well
We're starting a hacker archive of sorts of video content. Not just of the conferences. We have all kinds of things
It'll be growing as the weeks and months progress
Our telephone number is two one two two zero nine two nine hundred
Bernie we haven't heard from you in a while have any thoughts from Philadelphia? I'm just intrigued by this
by this
System you've got and I was wondering if you have any content restrictions
That our listeners should know about
As far as I mean restrictions on the content itself, I mean obviously
We don't like it if you you know upload the latest episode of some, you know CBS TV show
I mean aside aside from copyright issues. Sure. Um, no, not really
I mean you can you can talk about pretty much whatever you want. I mean we
You know don't put any restrictions on
Anything really? I mean, that's not entirely true. I mean don't upload your real estate
walkthrough of a house
Don't upload your blatant commercial for some product or service you're selling
You know, it has to be content has to be and we'd like it to be, you know, episodic
Yeah, so there is
Because the conferences come in a series and it's an informational thing we want to share with the with people
Some of these new features, you know, we can use in websites and other cool stuff and just get the video hosted and
share
No, it really is a perfect fit. Yeah
Okay
212 2092 900 is our telephone number. We're speaking with Jared and Justin from blip TV and
We're looking forward to Saturday at noon when the hope conference begins
No, I was gonna start the show actually by playing the the episode from 1994 where the hope conference was going to begin the next
Saturday at noon
but what we're gonna do is just simply release the videos one by one hour by hour as
They were played out back in 1994 and these are videos that have not been around that you probably have never seen
There also you can also get the DVDs, but you won't get them by Saturday. I'll tell you that
So this is the best way to see them as they happen and again starting at noon
You'll have a chance to get half-price tickets to the next conference taking place next July
so write down
www.2600.com write down
www.hope.net write down blip.tv slash 2600 magazine and set your alarm clock
make sure you've set the clock back to for standard time and
Be up by noon because that's when all the fun begins. All right, our phone number two one two two zero nine two nine hundred
Let's see who's out there
And good evening. You're on you were an off the hook. Okay, let's
Wait for those lines to populate again our phones by the way, they're making weird clicking noises. So
Let's let's not
panic too much
Go ahead worse and worse by the week. It's really quite sad. Yeah, it seems to
Nothing's nothing's lit up right now. I hope that means
That the phone's broken and not that our listeners don't love us anymore. Okay. Well, there is a line ringing
Let's let's see if this one is actually working and hopefully the rest will ring as well. And again
We're open to pretty much anything right now because we won't be on next week
So if you have anything to share with our listeners, please make it short because we only have a few minutes left
Good evening. You're on off the hook
Hi, you were talking about the 11 11 11, what about December 12th the next year
Be one and two you see those are different numbers. It'll be 12 12 12. Oh, yeah, right
Yeah, and the 22 I forgot about that that there's no 22nd month but maybe by 22 22 that will be
Yeah, but yeah, it's it's history. So let's all enjoy it together. Yeah, I recently heard about the show. I actually know
Firefly I used to work with him some years back Rob T. Firefly. You mean? Yes. Okay, usually people don't refer to him as Firefly, but
Yeah, that's that's cool. I'm sure he's listening now
Okay, thanks for your call and let's take the next one good evening you're on off the hook
Hello. Hi, what's on your mind?
Okay, well, you know, you just sort of have to make sense in our language to continue here good evening you're on off the hook
Hi, what's on your mind
Well, I was just wondering like what how come we like the only as far as like energy goes like we only hear about like
It's like the fossil fuels. You only have a real chance
Like why don't we talk about like biofuels like putting people to work like we put jobs, you know
Growing stuff and producing like our actual energy like if we're
Dependent on other countries when we go to set a world wherever we're getting the fuel from her under, you know the ocean
Excellent point sir. Excellent point. Are you listening to our radio radio show at all?
Because we aren't discussing that topic and then slightest bit but thanks. Thanks for the call. Good evening. You're on off the hook
Speak up, please
Hey, I'm big big fan first time calling. Hey, um
Thank you. What's on your mind?
Just call I'm just calling to ask for the book TV thing. Okay, go ahead. All right. Are they I'm using the HTML 5 thing
Yeah, we we use HTML 5 on our mobile offering
Unfortunately, some of the vendors that we work with haven't quite
Come around to using HTML 5
on the desktop
So that's kind of blocking our use of that as our only player, but that's where we intend to head
Cool, okay
Well, thanks, thanks very much for your call and
You know, there's something really rare about that call. It was completely on topic and there was his first call, too
I hope he makes many more calls because we like calls that are on topic and actually ask questions about the people in the studio
Yeah, 1111 guy was on topic. No, that was on topic too. That's true. But
Fossil fuels did we mention fossil fuels at any point? I mean, they're important. Yeah
Kyle we can speak about biofuels for hours. Couldn't we? Yeah
Yeah, but let's not speak about it now because we only have a couple of minutes left and we're talking about
Technology and the internet and hackers and things like that. It's taking a phone call. Good evening
You're on off the hook
I'm not in the air. Am I? Yes, you're on the air. Do you not want to be on the air?
Yeah, kind of not I just want okay
Well, then that's it and on the air anymore kind of not means no to me 2 1 2 2 0 9 2 900
That's number to call
For people who want to be on the air for people who don't want to be on the air dial any other number
All right, or no number at all. Not hard
Well, if you feel you have to make a phone call
Well, you could send us an email and and you won't your voice won't be on the air. Otho 2600 calm
Let's try and continue good evening. You're on off the hook
Monroe, I don't know. I just heard the name Monroe and right away that made me hang up. Good evening. You're on off the hook
Yeah, how you guys doing? Listen seems like we're a little bit off topic tonight. So I just figured I'm really into science fiction
I was wondering if you guys ever really talk about that too much on the show
I listen all the time and I just figured I'd bring it up
You need to listen to a great show called hour of the wolf, which is on every Tuesday night
I believe at midnight used to be on an ungodly hour on Saturday morning, but it's since been moved to
Wait, is it Tuesday night? No, I'm sorry. It's Wednesday. It's tonight. Is it tonight? It's tonight. Oh my god
It's tonight
so tune in at midnight and you'll hear Jim Freund and hour of the wolf and it's it's it's probably the most amazing science fiction
Show and fantasy and all kinds of cool things like that that you'll hear on the radio. All right
That's what it was on topic I guess good evening. You're on off the hook. Yeah. Hi
With the daylight savings time just try to do somebody's horoscope and try to figure out what?
You know when it's that time of the year whether they were daylight savings or not
Yeah in the neck. I never thought of that. That's so so it's actually interesting because the the
Horoscope people the astrology people do actually compile
References for the history of daylight saving time and the
The the standard database the the Olson database that's used by all kinds of Unix systems and and max and everybody
Actually recently got sued by an astrology company for like taking some of the information
So this is very strange lawsuit and we'll see what happens. All right. Thanks for that call, you know, Mike
I don't think I ever would have expected you to be telling us anything about astrology. I'm telling you about copyright
Where is this coming from copyright lawsuits in in timezone databases much more interesting than astrology, but sometimes there's overlap Capricorn
Oh, you know what that is. Okay. What about it? No, I just saw recognition in your eyes when I said that so
Okay, there's something here. I found that Bernie raises bees and you're into astrology
I know I don't I don't want to kind of secrets. I'm gonna find I don't want these vicious rumors on the radio
Don't fold that paper. I won't fold the paper. All right. Good evening. You're on off the hook
Oh
Yes, go ahead, please
Okay, sounds good, all right, how do I get it
Six miles, okay
The mantle the mantle is molten rock molten. Okay. All right
They did a drilling experiment with it with a drill melted at that point, right?
Okay, don't water down get steam out. You run a generator that's available all the way across the planet
Okay, my pen ran out of ink, but I'm gonna listen to the archive and get this down. Okay, good. Good
Any any other things we need to know?
All right, see how simple this folks you just gotta listen to the radio and all the world's problems we solve good evening
Hi, good evening. I'm not sure whether this is more appropriate for the computer show or you guys but I'll throw it out there
Well, it's getting awfully close to the computer show. So you're right on the cusp. Sure. I know. Is there any way?
That it's possible to record clips either from YouTube or your stream any video services that allow live recording of live
Streaming some of them even on YouTube with the frozen ones do not permit
Downloading or copying is there a workaround for that? That's an excellent question. It's on topic. So let's have our guests
Address that
Well, we can't really speak to you know, what you can and can't do with a YouTube stream
But our streams are not restricted in any way. It's a standard HTTP download. We're not doing anything
fancy
You could just pull it straight off of you know
Run a either look in your browser activity or you know run something like that and download the original file that you're watching right at the moment
Sounds pretty straightforward. Okay, you usually have a button to on your website. That's just really easy to use
2-1-2-2 zero nine two nine hundred. I have a couple of minutes left. Good evening. You're on off the hook
Wow, I mean, I'm not a computer expert, but I did actually listen to the show
Calm, you know
I just want to ask how is a blip TV playing into the
Independent media movement like with Occupy Wall Street and all these kinds of things stirring up all over the place
Are there people also using this to make alternative news sources? Sure. Sure
Um, I think democracy now actually hosts a video version of their show on blip and a number of other
Shows that are covering this that sort of stuff
Are are using our platform and and whomever would like to is free to yeah, it's a it's a lot of potential
I know people are clamoring for a video version of off the hook. I'm not sure that's going to happen
But if we did decide to do that, it seems like it would be made for something like what you guys offer
All right, let's try to get through these calls. Good evening. You're on off the hook
Okay, well this is a good chance to to sum up what you guys actually do
Good. All right
so we
We are part of a company called blip top TV
It's a
online video host for people making independent web series
We help independent web series producers do everything that isn't production. So we host the video
We help them distribute it
We help them promote it
and then we help them monetize it if they want by putting ads in the videos and splitting the revenues 50-50 and
If they if they choose not to have ads you still host it. Yeah. Okay. Same deal. Cool
All right, and again, we're releasing the the videos from the first help conference is coming Saturday starting at noon
You'll see the links on our main twenty six hundred comm web page or hope net or you can just go straight to blip TV
Slash twenty six hundred magazine and of course, we will have that special limited half price deal for the next conference
Known as hope number nine taking place July 13th through 15th. Hope you guys will be there as well
Any final words from from anybody before we sign off for two weeks?
As far as
content or
Contact two weeks. What's that? What's on next week? Next week is a special National Pacifica
Programming day. Oh, yeah from the Pacifica archives speaking of archives. They're nice people. They certainly are they make this place possible
All right. Well Jared Justin. I want to thank you best of luck to you
and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more from you in the future and
looking forward to Saturday when we actually get to use your system and see how it works if it can
Is it gonna crash under the weight of all these people tuning in at the same time for the same thing
Let's hope not. All right. Well, that's one way to find out. All right, you can write to us OTH at
2600 comm
With your comments questions theories whatnot
We'd like to hear from our listeners again. We won't be back for another two weeks preempted next week going out with another
Occupy Wall Street type song and again, please if you know of any please email us OTH at 2600 calm
This one comes from Citizen Rage
Yeah, Occupy
Occupy
Is
Occupy
Citizen Rage, that's what that was