The Internet and the role it plays in the digital revolutionÂ? is almost ready to realize its full potential.Â? Several of the largest Entertainment companies in the world are adapting to the Internet. Here are some of the headlines from theÂ? last few weeks:Â? MySpace offers downloadableÂ? episodes of ‘24′, Disney Offers Downloadable Movies, NBC offers The Office mini-episodes only online. For years, it was the Music Industry alone that fought with the Internet, but improvements in technology and increased access toÂ? high speedÂ? InternetÂ? for the average individual has put all forms of content at risk for massÂ? distribution.

For the Internet Industry, the way Entertainment companies have struggled with the concept of working with the Internet instead of against it is baffling. Without a legitimate source of the desired digital content, users looked to the only available source, and the Entertainment Industry lost out on potential revenue (those numbers are heavily debated). The success of iTunes proves that there are people willing to pay for digital content, the key is to provide themÂ? easy access. As suggested by the headlines listed above, this easy access is finally being provided, and as the headline on this article suggests, this is officially the Digital Era.

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This is probably the last blog to actually report on the event, but it’s obviously too big to ignore. Amidst questions about future direction for the blog and added work elsewhere, this was something that could wait to be discussed. When Bill Gates announced the scaling down of his role in the next two years (with his eventual retirement to be July, 2008), it is arguably the end of the most important era in the history of the planet.

It may seem like an exaggeration, but think for a moment about the influence of Bill Gates and what it’s meant for the average person. Microsoft was started in 1975 by Gates and childhood friend Paul Allen and together, based on the belief that computers would eventually sit on the desks of every home and office. Windows is the overwhelmingly favoured operating system of choice for personal computers worldwide, and computers, with the help of the Internet, are quite likely the most significant and important accomplishment, at least since fire.

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When we started out on this venture, to write our own blog about the industry, it was a first step in creating and establishing something of our own. We had alreadyÂ? looked at andÂ? been actively readingÂ? several different blogs, and we went as far as to research about blogging, soliciting sites like Debbie Weil’s for pertinent information. We set out to write this blog about the nerdiest of the nerds - everything that was happening NOW. We’ve been writing for about three months now, and, as was suggested by our initial research, we find ourselves at a fork in the road.

Although we aren’t worried about falling off the map completely, we have realized that the current niche we are trying to fill may not be viable. With industryÂ? heavyweights like Michael Arrington, Om Malik, and The Scobleizer working at the keyboard full time, what can we, a couple of Canucks from the Great White North, really offer in this arena? As a tandem, a generalization of my role would be a middle-man between Rob and the universe (a throwback to my studies in thermodynamics for all you chemists) - communicating between the nerdiest of the nerds and everyone else. Anyone remember Office Space - I’ve got people skills! Maybe this is something we can do with our blog as well.

Since we can’tÂ? join them, we’re going to try and beat them… We will look to post with more regularity, which will be tough given the hobby-like nature of this blog, and our entries will hopefully be more appealing to the general population. Rather than focussing on the specifics, we will try and take a broader lookÂ? at the big picture. In the next week, we hope to have a couple posts we’ve been working on, and from then on, will look to post maybe once or twice a week. To those of you who have enjoyed our efforts to date, we hope you will appreciate and relate toÂ? our future masterpieces even more.

In the last few months, there has been a lot of negative feedback relating to Google and their releases. We’ve been one of the many who have been less than impressed with Google. Google Spreadsheet didn’t even excite us enough to even write about, but if we made a post, it would probably have some similarities to what Paul Kedrosky had to say. We understand that several of these releases do not fall into Google’s core business, but when do these efforts turn into distractions and affect the image of the search-giant in a negative way?

Google Video was one of their quiet releases. Most people seem to find out about the service through a forwarded link. We think it is probably one of the best releases of late, at least head and shoulders above what everyone else had developed and implemented to that point, and probably an important step in becoming the Internet-based Big Brother that Google seems content in becoming - they control most of the information you receive, and now have a means of dictating the video content that you view. Despite having this level of control, will Google become the video gatekeeper?

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The site has been described by some as “the best update of Hot Or Not of all time,” runs on a completely Web 2.0 platform, and has the potential to feed the beast with a MySpace et al Widget that has been submitted to TagWorldWidgets.com for approval. The site was released on May 31st, 2006 with about 100 images of females (taken from a randomly selected “100 Hottest Women” list) and has a lot of potential growth avenues.

Going back to the comparison to ‘Hot or Not,’ one of the original and most popularÂ? rating sites, it is quite a bit different. There is no actual rating given to the images, and images are not rated individually. Instead, the user is given three different images, and from those images, one must be selected to be ‘Killed,’ one must be selected to ‘Marry,’ and one must be selected to, well, ‘F*ck.’ The site is that simple. There is a game-of-the-day (called ‘Today’s Game‘), random games, and there are some custom games provided by the devlopers, and some of the games are actually pretty tough to make a choice on - check out this game and this game that have been pre-programmed in.

There are a couple different areas the site can be improved on, and the developers indicate that they will be continuing to work on the site. There are only women available, at the moment, new images (of celebrities or just regular people) cannot be submitted, and something that has become a regular feature on sites is tags, which could be interesting to help filter the images available for the game. A simple idea, could have some potential, and if nothing else, it’s good for a couple minutes to get away from it all, so to speak.