We Were All Set to Watch it on the ‘Net…Not Yet
The Inauguration in all its glory is now history. I’m sure Justice John Robert’s gaffe during the oath will be replayed for decades. At the cafe, we were all psyched to watch the whole historic darn thing on our computers. I had my tech wizard Joe Obeng here late Monday night making sure our connections were working and the video display that normally shows enticing photos of sandwiches and short travel videos was all set to play hulu.com and the live stream.
So there we were, a bunch of customers huddled over a screen….that barely changed from a still image of the capital. DÓH! It seems that too many people were trying to do the same thing, and eventually, I found my customers drifting off to Georgios where the cable tv was presenting all they were missing on the ‘Net. The tough part is that you couldn’t have turned on a TV with rabbit ears because DÓH! they’ve stopped broadcasting over the air TV signals.
What did we do? We turned on NPR of course, and listened while the stupid computer monitors showed us a steady unmoving image of the event. Chase Sheinbaum, the Recorder reporter, came in and interviewed a few folks…but the news of the day was that the web isn’t ready for prime time yet.
January 22, 2009 @ 11:49 am
Bummer! We are a global nomad 3 laptop family into our 3rd year of an open ended tour, so know these kind of limitations well. ;)By chance ( we had to meet with the thousands of disadvantaged school kids that come with us virtually though a nonprofit) we were in the States briefly ( first time in years) and saw the election with family.We are in a 15th century tiny village in Spain for the winter. By chance our cheap ( but luxurious) furnished rental has a TV that we have never used. We connected with others through Skype & twitter while we watched it all on BBC Sky TV live! http://tinyurl.com/7jrka5 We are looking forward to the day when good free wifi or equal connection is everywhere! 😉