CBC Home Delivery

got 500 Mb to spare?

[toadhall]

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) is offering a "full screen multimedia magazine" called CBC Home Delivery < www.cbchomedelivery.com/index.cfm > that requires a version of Back Web < www.backweb.com > installed on the users machine for download-on-demand. The idea is to download each issue ("less than an hour" for high-speed) in the background or "when you're not using your Internet connection".

Back Web is a Windows program.

CBC is a publicly funded institution.

I admit it's a bit like Mr. Allen complaining about the quality of his food, then about the small portions (I'm an Intel user and I'm not going to subscribe anyway), but I'm submitting this as an interesting example of gross and proprietary system requirement overshadowing distribution of content -or- proprietary restraints foisted on the public with funds from the public purse.

It's also an interesting twist on formatted email newsletters.

Now, I'm just a grumpy old toad, but I do think this project is worth discussing. Have you seen any other efforts in this direction? Think it will fly? How might it effect "the way we, as a species, communicate"?

T