if i download it as a videofile….. does it have a similar effect like a screensaver would? …. or will this videofile damage the screen after a prolonged period of time?

@vanG: The assumption you’re making is that the other partners won’t give anything to charity. They haven’t told us how much they’ll be giving, but they’ve committed to doing it.

Oh, but you need a sense of humor to really appreciate it though.

What is new or innovative about it?

Well the marketing strategy is pretty interesting…

But most of all if you knew about the underlying technology being used to automate the ecommerce side you would discover something interesting and unique.

A new twist on the use of rss for podcasting, product delivery, content delivery, ecommerce, individually personalized feeds, subscriber management, membership management etc. is all behind the scenes.

Cali was recently introduced to the platform (hense her test of it).

Bravo Cali for thinking outside the box.

Though the dinosaurs will not always roar their approval… we all know what happens to them in the end

He has also just bought a 50″ Pioneer Kuro plasma TV for the same room. To think, he could have bought the iYule.tv for the plasma TV and not bothered with the fireplace at all. The effect would have been very similar (actually better, as bigger) and considerably cheaper!

Nice techcrunch corrected the post, however, even at 5% that’s pretty low.

Agree it’s a nice experiment for you.

But really, I’m disappointed. I downloaded the TV version and the darn thing is nearly 1gb in size. My Macbook Pro nor my high-end Dell can run the video without being a) choppy (at full screen) or b) stalling and sputtering. All in all, I can’t use it b/c it looks like crap skipping and stalling out. I’m not trying my hardest shrink the video down, but of course that’s only going to make the quality worse.

Cute idea, but not the greatest execution. :-/

sure, you can go probably google to your heart’s content and find lots of sites that offer something similar for free. they don’t have cali’s teams’ immediate ipod/apple tv/pc and even zune ready functionality, they don’t have geoff’s rather nice piano medley playing in the background, they don’t test the proof-of-concept in drm-freeness cali has mentioned, and you have to do most of the grunt work yourself.

it’s nice to get all self-righteous over “just how much” is going to charity. but you know what? some is going in that direction. and for the rest, they put in the hours and did the work, it’s fair they ask to be paid for it, just like it’s fair for the christmas tree farm guy to ask to be paid for growing the christmas tree you can cut down, take home and mount in the living room.

and listening to you folks with zip sense of kitschy irony or pop culture history drone on and on ad nauseum about “what is this? people pay for this?,” with no sense that, as allen stern said in post #1, there were vhf & uhf stations (long before basic cable or satellite dish, kids) around the nation that played this all day on the holidays, and there was also, i believe, a beta max and then vhs version. cali’s paying homage to a fun, kitschy pop-culture reference. but i get the feeling that is wasted on a group of haters who don’t want to bother realizing there was a history that came before you and you’re not inventing everything for the first time on this planet.

you haters remind me of mean-spirited youngsters, who, if you tell them something like you like to remember john lennon on his birthday of oct. 18, they purposely look at you a say a snotty, “WHO?!”

yeah. nice. and what have you done for peace or fun on this planet?

’nuff sed.

I first became aware of this at the iYule site, where I got no impression of all proceeds going to charity. Some, yes, but not all. However I did learn of three interesting and worthy charities I had not known about previously. If you like the idea of the product, buy it, if not, don’t, but don’t hold the people behind it resonsible for unintentionally confusing language by well-meaning writers interested in the project.

http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com

People are mentioning the charity thing in their blog posts, I guess because they see it as notable. I’m curious about what you think if you go to the Web site. The project has an experimental component and it has a charitable component, but the emphasis is on the commercial component. I agree, John’s post emphasizes the charity, but I don’t think our Web site does.

I really think Techcrunch should correct the original post to clearly reflect that this is not a charity thing, I think it’s deceptive to say so.

Days of endless NES (Super Mario, zelda!), blissing out on candy cane highs, loving fires, and who knows, if I had the iPhone instead of a Motorola Q in hand (hold emerging critical thought, please), then i might be singing a different Christmas carol.

I am all about the yuletide.

The part of the story relevant to TechCruchers is that iyule.tv is an experiment in selling DRM-free audio and video content delivered via premium RSS. We wanted to see if it’s a viable business for content creators.

It’s a fun proof of concept that has put some of you in a bah humbug mood, but consider the possibilities for recording artists. This could be a model for musicians to safely sell and distribute their work without a record label. The next release will be an actual album by Geoff Smith.

Jill Sobule, Singer/Songwriter/Recording Artist, posted a piece at allthingsd.com about her struggle as a recording artist after loosing her record deal. She writes about trying to understand how to use the latest tech to keep working as a musician. If you want the depth behind what we’re trying, it’s there.

No apologies for selling it. That’s the core of the experiment.

We’re using Amazon’s S3 for bandwidth. The Apple TV version is almost a GB, so we’re using quite a bit of bandwidth. Monetized RSS distribution is accomplished through premiumcast.com.

It’s an honor to be techcrunched, and hopefully the backstory will make it a little more worthwhile for TC readers. Otherwise, BAH HUMBUG right back at ya!