Wild Prediction: New Game Consoles in 2010, 2011

Admittedly I’m no Michael Pachter when it comes to foretelling the future of video games, but with Microsoft exec Robbie Bach saying that we won’t see a new Xbox 360 for a while, the temptation to speculate is too overwhelming. So join me as I wildly predict when the next round of consoles will come along.

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FCC At Odds With Obama Over DTV Switch

While the Obama team has asked Congress to delay the February 17 switch to digital television, FCC chairman Kevin Martin has publicly come out against any type of postponement. His argument is somewhat sound: he suggests that any delay could confuse consumers, and possibly have the negative side effect of giving consumers a reason not to take any future deadline seriously. Messaging for almost a year now has advertised the date, and media outlets are increasingly ramping up their coverage of the switch. Indeed, the digital converter box coupon program is in trouble, and as much as 7 percent of those who receive over-the-air programming may not be ready, but is it our fault that they procrastinated?

A New Yahoo Boss: Carol Bartz

[UPDATE: Now it's officially offical: Here's Yahoo's press release on Bartz's appointment.]

Looks like it’s all but official: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that embattled Web icon Yahoo is going to name Carol Bartz as its new CEO. Bartz, the chairman and former CEO of CAD giant Autodesk, has also spent time at Sun and 3M; she has a terrific reputation in the industry but doesn’t have a background in the Web and media stuff that drives Yahoo’s business. Then again, in eighteen months Yahoo has failed with a media guy (Terry Semel) and its cofounder, who helped invent the Web as we know it (Jerry Yang) in the CEO slot. Maybe it makes sense to try someone who’s simply a solid business executive.

Assuming Bartz is indeed stepping in, another shoe will surely drop: You gotta think that Yahoo will still be forced to sell itself off in chunks or in its entirety, merge with another company, or sharply focus its ambitions. If Bartz has the gig she was presumably hired in part on the strength of whatever future for Yahoo she articulated. Stay tuned…

What’s Up With Sling? Five Execs to Leave

Calling it an exodus would be pretty accurate. Five top executives of Sling Media have decided to leave the company, seemingly triggered by the expiration of an agreement to keep the executive team there after DISH’s acquisition of the company a little over a year ago.

CEO Blake Krikorian, co-founder and Senior Vice President of Business Development Jason Krikorian, President Jason Hirschhorn, Chief Creative Officer Ben White, and Vice President of Sales Greg Wilkes have all left the company, and sources indicate the departures are immediate.

For all intents and purposes this leaves Sling without any executive direction, save for those higher up in DISH. It’s a shame too — I really do not see a future for Sling as a standalone product without Blake at the helm.

No doubt, within a few years Sling will only be a feature in DISH boxes. It’s already happening as the company plans to add the functionality to its DVRs in the near future.

PaidContent was first with the news, and got an interview with Blake on his decision to step away from the company. “I’m out of there now. I want to just cut it … it’s best just to get it done because it’s not easy. It’s like a break up but it’s time to get on. It’s bittersweet, for sure.”

One has to wonder what exactly was going on behind the scenes. No transition period? It’s two founders just walking out the door? Something tells me that it wasn’t on very good terms… call it a educated guess.

Eight Ways Windows 7 Could Flop

What the heck is going on with Microsoft’s rollout of Windows 7? The OS seems to be on schedule to not only meet Microsoft’s timetable but possibly beat it. The free beta version runs better than some shipping versions of Windows I’ve paid for, and takes care of some long-standing problems. No features have been promised for Windows 7 and then deep-sixed when Microsoft couldn’t make them work. And the company’s marketing for the OS to date has been so restrained that it’s practically bashful.

Doesn’t anyone in Redmond remember that Windows upgrades are supposed to show up years late, missing major selling points and including new features of questionable value, and accompanied by marketing claims that no piece of software could live up to?

As far as I can tell at this point, Windows 7 is in surprisingly solid shape. It may well help Microsoft–and, more important, Microsoft customers–bounce back from the mistake that was Windows Vista.  But it won’t be a cakewalk. And I’m worried about at least eight things that could still go awry.

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Julius Genachowski to Chair FCC

Reports indicate President-elect Obama is set to tap Juilus Genachowski to head the Federal Communications Commision. Genachowski has experience with the agency: he served as general counsel to former chair Reed Hunt, who served during the Clinton Administration.

Obama and Genachowski are close associates. He was the President-elect’s chief technology counsel and they were classmates at Harvard Law School. Obama likely picked him due to his previous experience in technology, as he has served in an executive capacity at IAC.

Interest groups like Free Press seem to be happy with Obama’s selection.

“Under Julius Genachowski’s leadership, the FCC’s compass would point toward the public interest,” the organization’s executive director Josh Silver said. “The challenges facing the next FCC are enormous — a vast digital divide, an open Internet in jeopardy, consolidated media ownership, newsrooms in economic freefall and entrenched industries invested in maintaining the status quo.”

Analyst Predicts the Inevitable: Sony to Drop PS3 Price

And they pay this guy to say this? Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter has really gone out on a limb and predicted that Sony will cut the price of its entry level PS3 to $299 in April. This would come ahead of E3, and would likely be answered by a $249 Xbox 360 Pro package from Microsoft. No word on whether Nintendo plans to join the fray — but my bets are they will not. There’s still a ton of demand for the thing, so why make less money on it when people are buying it at the current price anyways?

Microsoft Invests Millions in Multitouch Company

In an effort to make Windows 7′s multitouch user-interface one of the OS’s top selling points, Microsoft has invested millions in Israeli startup N-trig to provide PCs with touchscreen technology.

Today, N-trig announced that it had completed a US$24 million fund raising round from investors, including Aurum Ventures, Challenger Ltd., Canaan Partners, Evergreen Venture Partners, and Microsoft. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft was the largest investor.

This investment should help ensure that the screens work well with Windows 7 and any other multitouch devices Microsoft might release (touchscreen Zunes, anyone?)  in addition to making the technology more widely available to hardware manufacturers. It makes a lot of sense for Microsoft to be certain that multitouch devices are on the market when it ships Windows 7, because customers will doubtless be looking for the feature.

A friend, who is a not-so-tech savvy lawyer, sent me a text message today expressing his excitement after he read an article about “Windows 7 having a touchscreen.” Customers will be dissatisfied if there are no multitouch PCs ready to buy when Windows 7 ships.

Microsoft needs happy customers in order to maintain its market share and strengthen the Windows brand. Its investment in N-trig is a down payment.

CES Gets Small

Over at VentureBeat, Dean Takahashi is reporting that this year’s Consumer Electronics Show drew 110,000 employees, down 22 percent from last year’s event. The official, audited attendance figures won’t arrive for a few months, but unless they’re sharply higher it looks like this may have been the smallest CES in a decade or more. For those of who made the trek to Vegas, smaller is in some ways better–it’s fewer bodies to compete with in taxi lines, and fewer bodies trying to elbow their way by you on the show floor. But it may also be one more piece of evidence that the era of humongous trade shows is coming to a close. We’ll know for sure next year, if the economy is in at least slightly more robust shape and CES 2010 shows a similar decline in attendance.

I’m not predicting the imminent death of the show, and if it goes away I’ll miss it. But in my time in this business I’ve seen the death of Comdex (which was once held twice a year), PC Expo (ditto), and Macworld Boston–and hey, the first CES I attended was the last Summer CES in Chicago, which was held back in 1994. I fully expect to outlive the current CES, too–at least in its current overwhelming and exhausting form.

Palm’s Pre Gambit and the Joy of Starting Over

My apologies if you think I’m overcovering Palm’s Pre smartphone here, but it’s not just a promising device that runs a promising operating system. It also represents a brave attempt at starting from scratch–something almost no technology company ever does.

Hardwarewise, the Pre looks nothing like a Treo. It doesn’t run PalmOS apps. The user interface probably has a fair amount in common with early Palm devices in terms of overarching philosophies, but there are only minor nods to the specifics of the old UI, such as the desktop full of icons. (Which come to think of it, looks as much like the iPhone as it does previous Palms.) I’m assuming that Palm’s new WebOS, which has Linux underpinnings and a top layer based on Web technologies, shares not a single line of code with PalmOS.

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Technologizer Predictions: What Could Be in 2009

Back on December 31st, I asked the Technologizer community to make technology-related predictions for the year ahead. You made scads of them–from ones that seem like sure bets for 2009 to ones that might never come to be. Highlights follow after the jump–thanks to everyone who contributed. Once 2010 rolls around, let’s rate the accuracy of these predictions, then start prognosticating all over again. 

Oh, and we have a winner for the Seagate FreeAgent XTreme external desktop hard drive I promised to give away in a random drawing. It goes to Dave Moyer–congratulations!

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Is Googling Bad For the Environment?

“Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.” So begins a story in the UK’s TimesOnline on a Harvard researcher’s upcoming study on computing’s environmental impact. I’m not sure what to make of that stat–is it a given that making a cup of tea is a more worthy undertaking than doing two Google searches? (The article’s in a British publication, so maybe so.)

But Google has responded in a blog post, saying that it runs the world’s most energy-efficient data centers and that the study’s math is all wrong. Driving a car for .6 of a mile, Google says, creates as much greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches.

None of these calculations strike me as being terribly valuable. Every search performed on Google has a different worth–or, at least, one performed by a cancer researcher in his or her work is surely more valutable than one performed by someone in search of funny pictures of cats, reviews of Adam Sandler movies, or porn. And why get uptight about the environmental impact of something so basically useful as Googling until we’ve shut down all ferris wheels, shoe-polishing machines, factories that produce whoopie cushions, and other power-hungry institutions that aren’t essential to humanity’s survival?

Anyhow, would you cut down on Web searching in the interest of being green?

Windows 7 Beta: Back Again Until 1/24

After an embarrassing false start, Microsoft has put the Windows 7 beta download back online. It says it’ll be available until January 24th, and it’s removed the initial cap of 2.5 million downloads it had set.

If my experience is any evidence, it has things under control–I snagged the beta without incident, installed it easily, and am adding applications now, mostly with good success. (Everything’s worked well so far except my HP OfficeJet printer’s setup software.) More thoughts soon; if you’re running W7, I’d love to hear yours, too.

Palm Posts Its Pre-View

Palm has posted an online video of the press conference it held on Thursday at CES to unveil its Pre smartphone. I’m glad I was able to attend the event in person, but the video is arguably a superior way to get a sneak peek at the Pre: You can watch it in the comfort of your own home, don’t have to spring for airfare to Las Vegas and a hotel room, and don’t have to trudge past 15,000 miles of slot machines at the Venetian before you can see it…

TrueMotion’s Way-Better-Than-Wii Game Controller

I’m still mulling over everything I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show, but I know what my sleeper hit is: Sixense’s TrueMotion game controller, which I saw demoed at the meeting room of chipmaker Analog Devices, which supplies some of the technology the controller uses. It looks very much like Nintendo’s Wiimote and the basic idea is the same. But TrueMotion uses a base station that creates an electromagnetic field to provide much, much, much more precision than the Wiiremote. It doesn’t just know the general direction you’ve moved the remote–it can tell exactly where it is and what angle you’re holding it at. End result: You can manipulate on-screen objects in a way that feels dramatically more real than on the Wii.

I could go on, but Sixense’s video demo shows this better than I can explain it–although TrueMotion is even more impressive when you try it yourself than it is in this clip:

Sixense says that TrueMotion will work with existing games as well as ones designed specifically to take advantage of its capabilities. It expects TrueMotion-based controllers for PCs to ship by Christmas, one controller and base station bundled with a game will go for under $100.

Internet Radio in Your Car

For me, the Consumer Electronics Show’s expansive hall of car electronics is usually by far the show’s least interesting quarters–it’s dominated by loudspeakers, in-car DVD players, and other pretty prosaic stuff. But I’m intrigued by Torian Wireless‘s partnership with Blaupunkt to create what Torian says is the world’s first Internet car radio.

The radio piggybacks on your 3G phone’s Internet connection via Bluetooth and provides access to both Internet stations chosen by Torian for the MiRoamer service and ones you add yourself, if you choose; it also serves as a hands-free calling system. It’s due for release in the second half of this year; the price will be in the $300-$400 range.

I’d want to take the radio for a test spin before forming any firm conclusions about it, and am particularly curious about how seamless the phone-radio connection is. (Me, I leave Bluetooth turned off except when I’m using it; I’d have to remember to switch it back on to make the MiRoamer work.)

Side note: The MiRoamer booth had a large display playing a promotion presentation in a continuous loop. I was confused why it seemed to keep claiming that the radio offered “surpassed sound quality” until I figured out that the video was getting cut off at the edges…