Will the iPad blend? Now we know
With all of the iPad excitement that there has been for the past week, there has also been a lot of people wondering if the iPad will blend as easily as the iPhone did. Thanks to Blendtec, we now have out answer...
Microsoft Student Insider Training Day 2: The first day at Microsoft Part 2
Welcome back to my series of posts from my Microsoft Student Insider Training trip to the Microsoft campus in Redmond. This is part 2 of 3 from Day 2, so lets pick up right where we left off! Read about Day 1 and Day 2 part 1 if you haven't already.
After the legal discussion, we broke for lunch back at the Commons. This time, I got to explore the commons and all the various different food stations it has to offer, from seafood to pizza, if you want it, they probably have it. The variety of food you can get there really is amazing. What really amazed me is that it is not just food, but there are cell phone stores from a couple of carriers, a bank and even a bike shop in the Commons area so Microsoft employees can get their bike worked on or make changes to their wireless carrier while they are at lunch. During each of our visits to the commons, we had various Microsoft employees come and eat with us and talk to us about everything from the products that they work on to the health benefits that Microsoft offers their employees. Unfortunately I don't recall the names of everybody we met with over lunch but it was great talking with them and learning about what they do and what Microsoft does for its employees and how much they love the company for it.
After lunch, we split up and got to meet with people from various teams throughout Microsoft for most of the afternoon. First, I got to meet with Mark Hopkins and Luis Cabrera-Cordon who work on the Microsoft Surface team. We got to spend close to a half an hour playing with Surface (something I have done on a couple of other occasions but only to a small extent) and learning about how it works, Microsoft's vision for the product, what powers it, how they test it and how crazy expensive it is($12,500 for just the unit, $15000 for a developer unit according to wikipedia which is a little higher than I believe we were told but in the same ballpark). It is amazing what the Surface tables can do. It uses 5 IR cameras to detect whatever is touching the table and uses special tags, kind of like a bar code to bring up information about something. This was demonstrated to us with business cards where the card was placed on the Surface and the persons information was read from the tag and brought up on the table. We were shown all kinds of really cool things and I have a video of most of it which I will try to get posted soon so you guys can see just how cool the device is. After we finished learning about and playing with the Surface, I headed to yet another building (pretty much everything was in a different building. It is amazing just how many buildings that Microsoft has) to meet Dan Fernandez (blog) and Brian Keller (blog) from Channel 9. They had planned for me to be on This Week in Channel 9 but unfortunately that wasn't communicated to whoever planned our schedule and because I had to be at the Scott Hanselman (blog) presentation, I never got to take advantage of that opportunity. I did get to check out the Channel 9 studios however and the equipment in there is amazing. From some awesome lighting to all of the recording equipment, it was everything I could do to keep from drooling and trying to sneak out with some equipment to spice up the Global Geek News Podcast. Someday I hope to make it back so that I can be on one of the Channel 9 shows but who knows when that day will come.
Like I mentioned, my next stop was a meeting with Scott Hanselman in yet another building where I met back up with the other insiders. At the time, I didn't realize how big of a deal it was to meet Scott. Apparently in the developers/Microsoft employee circles, he is a bit of an all star in the company and even has a great podcast. Apparently he works in another state and rarely makes it to the Microsoft main campus so the fact that we could steal an hour of his time is a big deal or so I am told. The meeting with Scott was a lot of fun as he is a barrel of laughs. He spent the hour talking to us about parallel computing and showing us just how efficient it is. He showed us some code that blew my mind (I haven't done any parallel programming in all of my years as a programmer). He showed us code for doing parallel queries to a SQL database and demonstrated just how much faster it is when you take advantage of the multiple cores on today's processors. I was quite impressed to say the least. Speaking of numbers, after our meeting with Scott, I got to go visit with Josh Carroll.
Josh Carroll works on the Telemetry team. Never heard of the Telemetry team? Neither had I, but I quickly found out just how important the team was at for various products at Microsoft. The telemetry team is responsible for the automatically collected data such as crash information and details sent through the feedback tool and such and relays the data back to the teams in charge of the various products so that they can fix bugs and see how users are trying to use the software for future improvements. The information that they interpret and pass on to the product teams played a large part in how great Windows 7 is. For a little more on the team and how the information they gathered was used to shape the final release of Windows 7, I highly recommend checking out this article at Ars Technica. Anyway, the meeting with Josh went great and it gave me some great insight into what happens when users send those crash reports to Microsoft when something goes wrong. I have always been one to submit my crash reports whenever I have them but never realized that they were really being used much until now. Thanks to this meeting, whenever somebody asks if they should submit crash reports, I always make sure to tell them to do it because it can make a big difference in future patches and releases.
I will cut off part 2 of day 2 right here. Stay tuned for the final part of Day 2, our night activities, which should be up within the next 24 hours and then we will be on to the most exciting day, Day 3 which includes my appearance on 1 vs 100 Live!
Interesting news from MIX2010, IE9, Zune’s Future and more!
Greetings Readers!
I meant to get this post up last week but because I was scrambling to get caught back up on homework after last week's trip to MIX 2010, it didn't happen. Anyway, I have some very interesting tidbits from MIX that I thought I would pass along. If you listened to this week's podcast, you likely already have heard most of them. Anyway, here we go!
With Zune's functionality being a part of the Windows Phone 7 Series devices all the way down to using the same software to sync, I sought out to find out if the Zune still has a future. The best answer I got came from Todd Brix, Senior Director for Mobile Platform Services Product Management at Microsoft. Although I don't have the direct quote at this time, I was told that the Zune still has a future and that a new Zune device would be coming out in the relatively near future. Zune HD 2 perhaps? Who knows.
During my conversation with Brix, I also asked about what kind of developer restrictions there would be for the Windows Phone 7 Series devices. Full details should be out in the spring, but I did get the answer that there would be no porn allowed and apps often used for illegal activity would most likely not make it into the app store as well. So much for having a bittorrent client on the phone. The approval process is being set up to be very transparent so developers know what is going on at all times and if an app is rejected, why it was rejected. To me, this sounds like they want to be like Apple, just a little more transparent about why apps are rejected.
Speaking of the phone, the browser on the phone will be based on IE 7. Also, I was told over a breakfast conversation by a Microsoft employee attending the event that pretty much all of the storage on the device other than your multimedia will be in the cloud as there will be no database on the phone like SQL-Lite or anything. There were whispers that a 3rd party might bring something like that to the phone but the phone itself will only support storing information on the cloud out of the box. Personally, I see this as a rather large drawback because you won't be able to access a lot of your data if you can't get on the network compared to something like the Android OS where SQL-Lite is part of the OS developers can store your information locally on your phone instead of only up to the cloud.
Speaking of the cloud, I got a chance to sit down with one of the PMs from the Internet Explorer team and got to have a fascinating discussion with them regarding everything from IE's market share numbers to how they handle reported vulnerabilities. I found it somewhat interesting that market share, especially the amount of the market that other browsers have didn't seem to worry them at all. As far as they are concerned, IE 8 has around 30% of the market share which is more than any other browser and they are proud of that. As far as IE 9 goes, my conversation took place the day before the announcement so I am a little short on juicy details other than that I was told that it would be out when they are satisfied it is done and not before then since you can't rush something like a browser, especially when security is among the most important aspects.
I think that is pretty much all of the news that I found interesting that is getting little or no press, but if I think of more, I will definitely post it.
MIX 2010 Day 2 Recap: Internet Explorer 9
Greetings readers!
I had hoped to get a podcast up tonight but because of dinner taking nearly 3 hours, I didn't have the prep time I need for the show. Schedule depending, hopefully tomorrow. I do have a HUGE surprise for you guys on the show but I will likely hold that off until next week when the show is back to normal. Anyway, lets talk Day 2 at MIX 2010!
Like yesterday, today started off with a big keynote. Yesterday's focus was Windows Phone 7 Series (a name I still hate even after having it explained to me today) and the topic of today's keynote was Internet Explorer 9 (Internet Exploder 9 for those who are cool). A few things was said about IE9 back at PDC but at the time they had only been working on it for 3 weeks so nothing was able to be shown until today. As much of an Internet Exploder hater as I am, I will say that what they showed off has me extremely impressed.
A number of demos were shown that allowed you to see how much better performing IE 9 was compared to Chrome and Firefox at some tasks because it is taking advantage of GPU acceleration for a lot of the rendering and stuff. I am not sure about the technical aspects of the demos but Chrome by far performed the worst out of all 3. I would have loved to see a comparison with the new Opera (my browser of choice) since it is the fastest browser there is according to various benchmarks. As impressive as these tests seemed to be, what really made my jaw drop was when they had a netbook running multiple 720p videos in the browser at the same time and still only using around 35% of the CPU. They were as smooth as butter and no frame drops compared to Chrome where just one video had the CPU pegged and it was dropping a bunch of frames. This was all with HTML 5 which is impressive.
If you want to try out the power of IE 9 (although it is no where near finished and has nothing in terms of security or anything so it should NOT be used as a primary browser), head over to IETestDrive.com. I really wish that more applications would take advantage of the GPU so there can be real innovations in terms of content possible.
I have a ton of other IE related news that will either comprise of another post of be apart of the next podcast but it is too much and far too interesting to be thrown in here.
After the keynote, I bounced around to a couple of different sessions. I attended a session on how to create Silverlight apps which was really cool because it showed how the same app that you can run in your browser will run in a Windows Phone 7 Series device with no changes (although changes should still be made to make it a more appropriate experience). I then attended a Silverlight debugging session what was kind of pointless since I didn't know Silverlight and it was more for people experienced with it and that face some common debug issues and this was how to fix some of the most common ones. I then spent a few minutes in a presentation on some kind of security vulnerability that mainly seemed to effect Chrome but it was still interesting. When the video is put up, I will try to remember to share a link as it is quite interesting.
Later, myself and fellow insider Joe Osborn got to sit down with Todd Brix, Senior Director for Mobile Platform Services Product Management and got to pick his brain about everything from the future of Zune to whether or not Microsoft Points will be used on Windows Phone 7 Series devices. The meeting went great and I have a bit of big story type news that came out of the meeting but that is deserving of its own post because the news is so huge.
After that was done, they day was largely done at least for me until we went to a dinner that was amazingly expensive and nowhere near my taste. If you are used to the whole 5 star restaurant and fancy food that you would see on the Food Network kind of thing, you might enjoy it but as somebody who eats mostly things like pizza, fast food, chinese food, ect, it was not to my liking. The meal was like 4 or 5 courses and it was all I could to do swallow of the items without a display of projective vomiting. I could clearly never handle the rich person kind of life style.
Tomorrow there is no keynote but several more sessions. I will also be sitting down for an on camera interview with Raffi Krikorian from Twitter's Platform Team. With any luck, maybe I can get some juicy news from that interview. The conference ends at 4PM tomorrow so the odds of me being able to get a podcast recorded and up at some point tomorrow are looking good assuming my homework doesn't take up too much time.
Check back for more news from MIX 2010 and the major news that I promised to share very soon!
Microsoft’s CES Keynote was a major snooze
Greetings Readers!
As I am sure many of you are aware, last night was Microsoft's CES 2010 keynote and if you watched it, you know that the most exciting thing that came out of the keynote was the power failure that delayed it close to 30 minutes (We live blogged it here). As I stated last night, I would give my thoughts, both good and bad right here (Disclosure: I am a Microsoft Student Insider), so here we go.
I was rather surprised at the lack of announcements coming out of the keynote compared to years past. For those hoping for a big announcement regarding the rumored new features behind Ford's Sync, you are out of luck. Those are apparently being saved until Ford's keynote. Hoping for a major announcement about the Zune HD? Nope, nothing here either. Windows 8? Wishful thinking. A portable version of the Xbox? This will remain every gamers fantasy. What was announced? Ballmer really didn't announce much. He gave some lines about Windows 7 being the fastest selling OS of all time and some analyst speculation that PC sales will increase considerably this year but I don't really call those announcements. Steve announced that the HTC HD 2 running Windows Mobile will be coming to T-mobile but I am not sure anybody cares since we are talking Windows Mobile after all and T-mobile doesn't help either. Steve said they would talk more about the future of Windows Mobile at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona next month. Ballmer did show off some prototype "Slate PCs" that will hopefully combat anything Apple announces later this month. The one he really demonstrated was an HP prototype that was running Windows 7 and the Kindle PC software to demonstrate how good of an e-book reader it could be and it looked to be about the same size as the Kindle 2. Sounds nice and I will definitely buy one, but if you are going to try to compete with Apple, you need to show something that will come out a little sooner rather than some prototype. Wait, you really wanted to know what was announced? Ok.
As far as REAL announcements go, there are a couple fairly minor announcements. Bing is now going to be the default home page and search engine for all HP computers. Excited yet? They also demonstrated what a Cable Card and a pc in your tv could do and said that with it, you can record 4 HD channels simultaneously which was probably the most impressive thing from they keynote. They talked a bit about Media Room and some partnership with AT&T's U-verse that I still don't understand and finally they had a couple interesting Xbox announcements. Besides all of the interesting number like units sold and games sold, Robby Bach announced that Project Natal will ship as an attachment to existing Xbox 360 systems in time for Christmas 2010. No price although I would expect that around E3. There was also no demo which was kind of disappointing. They also teased a new Halo game only to have it turn out to be a trailer for Halo Reach which was announced back at E3. I was rather disappointed but the audience seemed to love it since they could see the trailer and everybody watching the stream could not. The big Xbox 360 announcement was Game Room.
What is Game Room? Game Room seems to be a virtual space similar to the PS3's Home where you can run around a giant arcade as your avatar and buy and play old arcade games that look like the arcade units you would spend tons of quarters on in years gone by. Over 1000 games are planned for the next year that will be released in weekly batches that you will have to purchase. The coolest part is that this will be not only for the Xbox 360 but for PCs too! How much are these games going to cost you ask? If you want to play an arcade game on both platforms, you will be paying 400 Microsoft points aka $5. To get it on one platform, it is 240 points or $3. If you really want the old school experience, you can pay 40 points or $.50 and get two quarters worth of playing time on the old machines. The games can be played with other people, in 1080p and there are cross-platform leaderboards and achievements. This is coming in the Spring update to Xbox Live. Personally, I am really looking forward to this because lately I have had the urge to start buying old arcade machines and turning my basement into a small arcade but now I will be able to do it virtually instead of having to completely redo the basement. This was the only real announcement with any cool factor to it other than the HD recording. If you would like to see the demo that the people watching the live stream couldn't watch, you can check it out here.
That was pretty much about it. It was a very boring keynote and ended kind of out of nowhere. It certainly doesn't make me super excited about Microsoft this year but hopefully that will change. What did you think about the Microsoft CES 2010 keynote? Good? Bad? Boring? Exciting? Let us know!
Top 10 Geek Gifts for the 2009 Holiday Season
Greetings everybody!
It is that time of year again, with a little over a month left before Christmas, it is time to start figuring out what you are going to buy! The big question is what are you going to get that geek in your life? I have compiled another list again this year of great geek gifts to get that geek in your life assuming they don't already have them. Here we go!
#10. Electronic Rock Guitar Shirt
Are you so good at Rock Band and Guitar Hero that you want to take your act on the road? You can do something like that with this awesome electronic rock guitar shirt. With this shirt, you can let everybody enjoy your awesome guitar skills! The shirt comes with a mini-amp that you can clip on your belt that will allow you to tweak your sound and crank up the music so that you make sure that everybody can hear you. ThinkGeek is selling this awesome shirt for $29.99.
Electronic Rock Guitar Shirt
#9. Kill-A-Watt Graphic Timer
Are you or your loved one concerned about the safety of your electronic devices and just how much energy you are using? If so, than this Kill-A-Watt Graphic Timer is for you. Not only will it protect you from voltage spikes, but it will also protect your precious appliances and gadgets from over current, over voltage and even under voltage. This device will not only let you measure your power usage down to the minute, but you can program it to function at different times for up to 7 days. There are a number of other features, but if you are looking to track your energy usage to help cut down on your electric bill or just want to protect your appliances and gadgets, you should definitely check out the Kill-A-Watt Graphic Timer from ThinkGeek at the reasonable price of $69.99. If you can use it to save on electricity or protect your appliances, this wonderful meter could easily pay for itself over time.
Kill-A-Watt Graphic Timer
#8. The Laptopper Portable Shelf
Have you ever been sitting in your car outside of a coffee shop using their wifi? Kind of uncomfortable isn't it? Well now you have a place to comfortably set your laptop while you are surfing the net. This portable shelf will slip on your steering wheel or even over a headrest to give you a place to set any laptop 17" and smaller as well as whatever other gadgets you may be using. Whether you just want to watch a movie or participating in a wardriving competition, at $14.99, the Laptopper Portable Shelf from ThinkGeek is great for anybody!
The Laptopper Portable Shelf
#7. Rovio - WiFi Roaming Bot
O Rovio, Rovio, where for art thou Rovio? Are you looking to keep an eye on your home while you are away on vacation or just want to check up on that new babysitter? If so, the wifi connected Rovio is just for you! This cool little robot is equipped with a webcam, microphone and speakers. You can control Rovio manually or set up way-points to monitor your house. Rovio can be controlled from any internet connection around the world. What is really impressive is that you can control it with a PC, Mac, an iPhone and even your PS3! The Rovio also has built in LEDs to light its way in poorly lit areas. At $229.99 from ThinkGeek, Rovio seems reasonably priced, especially considering the fact that it has a base station it returns to for charging similar to the Roomba.
Rovio - WiFi Roaming Bot
#6. Grab-It Pack Gadget Holster
I don't know about you, but I am always looking for ways to carry more gadgets with me. I have been made fun of on numerous occasions for having my pockets so stuffed full of stuff that you would suspect I just robbed an electronics store. Now you can carry more items and get more strange looks than ever before with the Grab-It Pack Gadget Holster! Strap this around your waist and legs and you will turn a lot of heads when people see just how many gadgets you can carry! ThinkGeek sells the Grab-It Pack Gadget Holster for $24.99.
Grab-It Gadget Holster
#5. Scottevest Quantum Jacket
Maybe the Grab-It Gadget Holder isn't quite your style or maybe it doesn't have enough pockets to put stuff in, so why not try Scottevest's Quantum Jacket! Not only does this jacket look far less goofy, but it is also breathable and water resistant! Did we mention this jacket has an amazing 28 pockets?! Just think how many gadgets you can carry with you from phones to mp3 players to portable gaming devices when you have 28 pockets to store them in? Just think how much fun you could have have going through airport security when you have to empty out 28 pockets! Don't forget, this jacket has their patented Personal Area Network (PAN) to manage your earbud wires! If you head over to Scottevest, you can get this jacket for $250, but can you really put a price on carrying 28 pockets worth of gadgets while staying warm and looking good all at the same time?
Scottevest's Quantum Jacket
#4. Mini 300Mbps Wireless N Travel Router
Have you ever wanted to say that you are the proud owner of the world's smallest wireless N router? Now you can! This tiny wireless N router from TRENDnet will make sure you can transfer data across your wireless enabled devices quickly and easily. A product like this is great if you are stuck in a hotel with crappy wifi that you can only get if you are standing on the toilet with your arm stretched out like a fountain. Just fire this up where you can get the signal and you instantly have a good enough signal that you can get anywhere in the hotel room. For $79.99 from ThinkGeek, the TRENDnet Mini 300Mbps Wireless N Travel Router might just be the best router for the road warrior in your life.
TRENDnet Mini 300Mbps Wireless N Travel Router
#3. Ironkey Military Strength Flash Drives
How important is the security of the files you move around? Do you carry your financial documents on a thumb drive so you can have access to them anywhere? What about confidential plans from work? Now you can rest easy because with an Ironkey USB drive because you won't have to worry about your data falling into the wrong hands again! With hardware encryption, the tough looking Ironkey can stand strong against both virtual and physical attacks. These drives have so much encryption and security on them thanks to a built-in encryption chip, even the military is using them in Afghanistan! The only way to access the information on the drive is with the password and if somebody tries to hack into it and enters the wrong password 10 times, the encryption chip self destructs and makes the drive useless and nobody will ever be able to get your data. If security is what really matters to you, you can't go wrong with an Ironkey Military Strength Flash Drive. ThinkGeek sells a 1GB model for $69.99 and a 4GB model for $139.99. Although they aren't cheap, you should ask yourself just how much your data is worth.
Ironkey USB drive
#2. Motorola Droid
My, how far we have come in a year. Last year's list included T-Mobile's G1 Android phone and this year, we have a vastly improved Motorola phone by the name of Droid for Verizon customers. With a 5-megapixel camera, turn by turn directions, a physical and virtual keyboard as well as turn by turn directions just to name a few of the features, many are calling this an iPhone killer or at least as good as the iPhone. With over 10,000 applications available on the Android Marketplace, now is a great time to be looking into getting the Droid on what many consider to be the best wireless network in the US. If you are in the market for a new phone and don't want to suffer the hell of the AT&T network just to have something as nice as an iPhone, check out the Motorola Droid which you can get from LetsTalk.com for $150.
Motorola Droid
#1. Mimo Mini USB Monitor
Not a day goes by that I think to myself, "Gee, I could be much more productive if I had room for a second monitor." Now I can and I won't need a new desk and power strip to get it! Any of the Mimo mini USB monitors might give you just the extra amount of screen you need to be extra productive without taking up as much room on your desk as a full sized monitor. These monitors are powered by a USB cable so you don't have to worry about trying to get a bigger power strip to plug a second monitor into or a new graphics card that can support a second monitor. Now you can keep email or whatever you want open on a smaller, secondary monitor while you work on your main screen so you can see when you get that important email you have been waiting for. Did I mention there is a touchscreen model? If you are into the touchscreen movement and want a monitor you can physically interact with, for a little higher price, you can have just that! You might have a hard time putting a price on productivity, but ThinkGeek managed put put a price on it, and depending on which of the three models you get, the Mimo Mini USB Monitor will cost you between $129.99-229.99.
Mimo Mini USB Monitor
Did we miss something? What geek items are on your Christmas list?
Follow Global Geek News on Twitter and listen to the latest Global Geek News Podacast!
Is there anything Best Buy won’t do to screw its customers?
Greetings Readers!
Anybody who has ever dealt with Best Buy likely has their own horror stories about the giant, myself included and now they have a new tactic. Best Buy is now charging $130 to set up your Playstaion 3.
What do you get for your $130? You will get your PS3 plugged in, have its firmware updated, have your user accounts created and have the parental controls set up. Basically, stuff you shouldn't even need to look at the manual to figure out how to do. Why does Best Buy insist on ripping its customers like this? I am also curious who is dumb enough to pay $130 for this?
Here is the picture in case you need to see this ripoff to believe it.
Best Buy rips off Playstation 3 customers. Credit: Kotaku
Check out the latest Global Geek News Podcast!
Apple’s 9-9-09 event thoughts…nap time!
Greetings readers!
Now that I have woken up from the sleep that Apple put me in, I figure I should comment on the very underwhelming event where Apple launched a couple of new iPods, changes some prices and launched iTunes 9.
Lets start off with the big news, Steve Jobs is back! It is great to see that Jobs is back and acknowledging his liver transplant which apparently came from an organ donor that was killed in a car accident. That said, either his shirt is really large or his is skin and bones with saggy man boobs which you can see in the picture below from gdgt. I would say he really needs to gain some weight. Less vegan food and a few more Big Macs would do him good. Anyway, he gave us some impressive numbers about 30 million iPhones being sold, 20 million iPod touches, and 1.8 billion apps have been downloaded.
Steve Jobs presenting at Apple's 9-9-09 event. Credit: gdgt
On to iTunes! It seems Apple is jumping on the ringtone movement that died out long ago by selling over 30,000 ringtones for $1.29. Nice job at keeping up with current trends Apple! Next time, I recommend jumping on the bandwagon before the wagon has been abandoned in a field with only one wheel left. That said, I do like the look of the new iTunes as it has more of a Zune Marketplace kind of feel in some areas. The ability to manage apps directly from iTunes looks to be a great feature as well as bringing the Genius technology used to bring you the music you like to apps to help you find apps you might like. Finally, the iTunes LP stuff looks pretty impressive, especially if you are a music fan who likes pictures. Now onto the iPod news!
The first part of the iPod news talking about how it is a great gaming platform and such was real snooze of the show. While I do enjoy a couple of the games on my iPod Touch, they are trying to make it sounds far superior in nearly every way to the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. IT IS NOT! I will admit it has potential as a gaming device, but a touch screen will never beat the controls you will find on any handheld gaming device going all the way back to the Gameboy. Actually, I feel like ranting on this more, so that will be the focus of my next post, but I will let it go for now so we can focus on other iPod related news. Apparently Apple thinks that at the low price of $200, people will want to get an 8GB iPod Touch. 8GB Isn't enough to take most people's music collections, rather less video and apps. This was done purely to undercut the Zune HD who's 16GB version (the smallest size) is $220. Personally, I would prefer the far better audio experience and double the size for the extra $20. Apple can play the price war all it wants, but value speaks volumes. Speaking of the iPod Touch, the new 64GB version sounds nice but it needs more features, like maybe the camera everybody was expecting which came in the iPod Nano.
Before I talk about the Nano, the iPod classic has been upped to 160GB which I think is a bit too big. Not too big for a large music collection but who really needs to carry around 400,000 songs with them? I would call that overkill. Anyway, back to the Nano. It seems the Nano is getting the rumored camera that everybody figured the iPod Touch would get too. They didn't say much about the camera other than it could do video and had a mic. I would say its certainly a good update and a good play against the Flip camcorder but I wanted to see it on the iPod Touch as well since it is far more capable than the nano and would have some real uses for it. Oh, and both the nano and the shuffle have a bunch of new colors for those that care about about fashion. I have always found the many colors idea of gadgets kind of pointless but I guess I am not the average person. I am a proud owner of a poop brown Zune, so clearly I have no fashion taste. The only other noteworthy thing in relation to the Nano is the fact that it is getting an FM radio. For my opinion on that, scroll back up to the bandwagon comment since the Zune had this from day one as well as a good number of other portable media devices. If they really wanted to impress me, they would put in an AM radio.
That was pretty much the event. No Beatles, no camera in the iPod Touch, no Rolling Stones and no Mac tablet. The event was pretty much a big snooze and I am amazed that the stock didn't drop more than a whole 1% considering it usually plunges on even good release events like this. There is one image that they showed that I think speaks volumes about the idea of an Apple netbook. They talked about how the iPod Touch/iPhone are basically portable computers and showed an image (seen below) of some body trying to shove a Dell netbook into their back pocket. I think this is a good indication that a netbook isn't coming and that the closest thing you are going to get to one is and iPod Touch.
Apple tries to put a Dell netbook in its pocket. Credit: gdgt
What did you think of the event? Exciting? Boring? Did Steve Jobs look healthy to you? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Amazon’s VOD success depends on distribution deals
Greetings Readers!
The streaming video market has become rather crowded in the last couple of years with services like Hulu and YouTube, but the video service with the most potential is Amazon's VOD service.
Amazon's VOD (Video On Demand) service has been around for a while and has a huge library of tv shows and movies including some of the newest releases yet it has never gained much traction in a world dominated by Netflix. If Amazon hopes to really compete in this market, it needs to do more than advertise its service (which it doesn't do a very good job at anyway). Amazon needs to through its weight behind the service and make sure that everybody is aware of it and it is accessible as possible. How can they make it accessible? Amazon needs more distribution deals with hardware manufactures.
Amazon currently has deals which allow its service to be accessed on Roku boxes, Panasonic Blu-ray players, TiVo DVRs and Sony Bravia TVs, but they have to do much better than that. Amazon needs to push for a deal with every TV manufacture instead of just Sony and their Bravia line. With many people upgrading to new and better TVs after the DTV transition to take advantage of the new HD content, there is a huge opportunity for Amazon if they work to put themselves on all internet connected TVs. Same thing with Blu-ray players, Blu-ray is starting to gain traction and Amazon needs to do its best to get on more than just Panasonic players if it wants to get in on the ground floor before the mass exodus from DVD to Blu-ray begins. As far as TiVo goes, that is a great move for them but they should also work towards being on the DVRs offered by cable and satellite providers.
Amazon has the huge opportunity to grab a huge chunk of the streaming video market if they are willing to do what is necessary to put their service in front of as many people as possible. They have started moving in this direction, but so as Netflix and others, so if they want to put themselves in a dominant position, they must act now!
Finally, I think they need to go mobile with their video on demand service. Apps for the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and such should be coming too. Many people like to watch videos on their phones, so if you have a way to stream videos to a phone, even if it is over wifi, you are ahead of the competition.
The competition in this space is in its very early stages and Amazon is on the position of either being left behind or taking the lead. The potential for profit is there, will they strike before its too late?
Loading ...Blogroll
Buy me a Pizza!
Archives
- April 2010 (5)
- March 2010 (11)
- February 2010 (2)
- January 2010 (7)
- December 2009 (3)
- November 2009 (5)
- October 2009 (4)
- September 2009 (7)
- August 2009 (5)
- July 2009 (4)
- June 2009 (17)
- May 2009 (8)
- April 2009 (3)
- March 2009 (3)
- February 2009 (1)
- January 2009 (6)
- December 2008 (10)
- November 2008 (11)
- October 2008 (7)
- September 2008 (13)
- August 2008 (2)
- July 2008 (6)
- June 2008 (13)
- May 2008 (6)
- April 2008 (1)
- March 2008 (8)
- January 2008 (1)
- December 2007 (1)
- October 2007 (2)
- August 2007 (1)
- September 2006 (1)
- July 2006 (4)
- June 2006 (1)
Categories
- Advertising (4)
- Apple (11)
- blogging (29)
- Blu-ray (7)
- computers (4)
- Consumer Electronics (17)
- Desktop (2)
- DVD (3)
- E-mail (1)
- Education (1)
- format wars (1)
- gadgets (6)
- Gaming (21)
- Global Geek News (9)
- Google (1)
- HD-DVD (1)
- high-def (2)
- Hulu (1)
- Internet (35)
- Invites (1)
- Kindle (2)
- Linux (1)
- Microsoft (31)
- MIX 2010 (7)
- mobile OS (3)
- Net Neutrality (1)
- New Media (5)
- Nintendo (4)
- Old Media (2)
- online video (4)
- PDC 2009 (2)
- Personal Branding (5)
- piracy (3)
- Podcasting (5)
- Portable Media (8)
- Productivity (2)
- Red Hat (1)
- retail (7)
- Reviews (1)
- search (3)
- security (4)
- social networking (7)
- Software Development (1)
- Sony (7)
- storage (2)
- Student Insiders (1)
- Tech Tips (2)
- TechCrunch50 (6)
- The Cloud (2)
- Twitter (15)
- Ubuntu (1)
- Uncategorized (21)
- User Experience (3)
- Viral Videos (1)
- Windows (6)