Skepticism Catches Up to Cloud Gaming

When OnLive revealed its plans last week for a streaming computer game service, it was hard to pick out the criticism with all the buzz in the air. Admittedly, I didn’t bother to question the service’s technical feasibility (I’m still fixated on whether OnLive can really compete on pricing), but now that the dust has settled, there’s plenty of skepticism to go around.

If you missed it, OnLive is supposed to stream high-end PC games to practically any computer with an Internet connection. It does this by handling all the processing on its own servers, and then sending packets of compressed data to the player. A day after OnLive’s unveiling, former Acclaim creative director Dave Perry announced a similar service, called Gaikai.

Shortly after OnLive’s big reveal, an article in Eurogamer challenged the service on processing power and compression abilities. At one point, the article claims OnLive would have to run games at 1,000 frames per second to achieve its claims of 1 ms latency. A video encoding specialist literally laughed out loud when Eurogamer described OnLive’s plans. Still, OnLive is supposedly using new technology, so I’m a little wary of Eurogamer’s argument myself. OnLive founder Steve Perlman told the BBC that Eurogamer wrote “a very ignorant article” that improperly conflates framerate and latency.

Now, a new nugget of doubt has arrived. Crytek, the company behind PC gaming’s gold standard, Crysis, said its own research found that cloud gaming won’t be feasible until 2013. OnLive is scheduled to launch later this year. “They have to provide fast bandwidths and connectivity in order to allow such technology to excel,” CEO Cevat Yerli told GamesIndustry.biz. “So as it was dependent on somebody else, we decided to wait.”

On a related note, Business Insider’s Eric Kangel wonders whether cloud gaming will die if Internet service providers adopt bandwidth caps. Certainly, the dollar per gigabyte model that Time Warner Cable is testing in some cities could make the cost of OnLive and Gaikai spiral out of control.

All of this reinforces what skeptics have been saying all along: Successful tech demos and a bundle of licensing agreements with publishers only go so far. Eventually, cloud gaming will simply have to prove itself in the field.

5Words for April 2nd, 2009

1Word? That was a gag!

Microsoft Office…for the iPhone?

Lemme touch the Palm Pre!

$1000 Sony camcorder has GPS.

SlideShare’s prank: funny, cruel, both?

Sorry, unauthorized iPhone app stores.

More on Android tethering apps.

Conficker could still be dangerous.

Disney’s Iger on Internet TV.

XM/Sirius merger’s loose ends.

Stolen iPhone? It calls cops!

Hands-on with Nintendo DSi.

Microsoft Considering Office for iPhone?

Microsoft Business Division president Stephen Elop raised hopes for a version of Office for iPhones during a talk at the Web 2.0 Expo. He says the company has took notice of the rise in demand among smartphone users to edit MS Office documents. When asked however directly if it meant the company was indeed developing a Office suite for iPhone, Elop deferred. “Not yet—keep watching,” he said.

Elop stressed that the company remains committed to Office on the web and mobile devices, and said that it continues work on a Web version of the suite. He did disclose that any beta of that product would not be this year.

Zer01: Unlimited Calls and Data for One Low Price

Announced at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas yesterday, a new wireless company called Zer01 Communications offers the entire connectivity package–unlimited calls and data–in one package, starting at only $69.95 a month. The solution could attract lots of interest if the ongoing economic recession forces people to re-examine how much they’re paying for utilities such as phone service.

PCMag.com broke the story last month after talking with ZER01 CEO Ben Piilani. According to Zer01, “using proprietary technology and infrastructure as never before, it can provide affordable, unlimited mobile service.” But Zer01 isn’t really a wireless carrier. It’s really a VoIP company that piggybacks on top of traditional networks such as AT&T, as PCMag.com reported.

Unlike most U.S. carriers, Zer01 doesn’t do contracts–service is pay-as-you-go. But unlike other pre-paid plans, which typically charge you by the minute or kilobyte, Zer0 says that its domestic plan includes ‘unlimited minutes, any time from anywhere in the continental U.S.A and Canada,’ for $69.95 per month, while its international offer, for $10 more, includes the domestic service. For its international connectivity, the company claims partners, in South America, Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. But it has kept the names of its domestic and international partners secret so far.

Despite Zer01′s claim of “no other fees and taxes,” there is also a one-time, $30 activation fee, and parental controls are available for an extra $4.99 a month. So the subscriber’s first payment is at least $99.95.

It remains to be seen just how reliable Zer01′s VoIP is. If there are problems, customers might regret having chosen to pre-pay for Zer01′s service.

If a subscriber doesn’t already have an unlocked GSM phone to use with Zer01, he or she can buy one from Zer01: Options include HTC’s TyTN II (also sold by AT&T as the Tilt), Touch 3G, and Diamond, and Pharos’s Traveler 117 and Traveler 127. It hasn’t yet set prices for any of these models. It also sells various other optional services and accessories, such as a two-year protection plan for the HTC TyTN II for $69,  a battery charger for $29.99, and a Bluethooth headset for $79.99.

The Ten Worst Microsoft Product Names of All Time

[NOTE: I wrote this piece for my pals at PC World, who kindly agreed to let me publish it here, too.]

If Microsoft had invented the iPod, it would have been called the Microsoft I-pod Pro 2005 Human Ear Professional Edition. The cult-hit video that makes that assertion may have been a joke, but it rings true. And when word emerged that the video was a self-parody produced within Microsoft, the point was even clearer: The world’s largest software developer just isn’t very good at naming stuff.

Some Microsoft names sound clunky; some are confusing; some are undignified or overambitious. More than any other company in technology, the behemoth of Redmond loves to change product names–often replacing one lackluster label with an equally uninspired one. Microsoft has also been known to mess up some names that are actually perfectly good, such as Windows and Word, by needlessly tampering with them.

Herewith, in chronological order, are ten Microsoft names that could have been a lot better, together with some semiconstructive advice on monikers that would have more euphonious and/or more accurate. I also selected six not-quite-as-bad runners-up.

1993: Word 6.0 for Windows: When Microsoft upgraded 1991′s popular Word 2.0 for Windows, it replaced it with…no, not something logical like Word 3.0. Rather, it blithely hopscotched over three version numbers and landed at Word 6.0. The official explanation for the skippage was that it brought the Windows edition’s version number into line with that of the older DOS incarnation of Word. But conspiracy theorists noted that it also allowed Word to catch up with archrival WordPerfect, which also released a version 6.0 in 1993.

Whatever the rationale, the move rendered the practical purpose of version numbers meaningless, thereby setting a bad example for other companies such as Netscape, which later went straight from Netscape Navigator 4.0 to version 6.0.

What it should have been called: Word 3.0 for Windows. Simple and accurate.

1995: Microsoft Bob. When I asked my Twitter and Facebook pals to nominate bad Microsoft names, this legendarily lousy Windows front-end hosted by animated characters came up far more often than any other product. It’s possible that the badness of the product has tarnished its title. But as several people pointed out, “Microsoft Bob” is both cutesy-cute and uninformative–it doesn’t give you an inkling as to what the product is all about. (The box featured a smiley face wearing Bill Gates-like nerdy glasses, but the main character in the interface was a dog named Rover, who was later revived for Windows XP’s misbegotten search feature.)

What it should have been called: Well, Microsoft Rover would have been at least slightly more descriptive–especially since the product itself was such a dog.

1996-present: Every name ever associated with handheld devices running Microsoft software. At first, they were called Handheld PCs, and ran an OS known as Windows CE. Then they morphed into Palm PCs–until the PalmPilot people complained, whereupon they became Palm-Size PCs. But only briefly: Soon, Microsoft wanted us to call them Pocket PCs, and the software they ran was renamed Windows Mobile.

That name stuck around when the OS migrated from PDAs to phones, although it bifurcated into two editions: Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Windows Mobile Smartphone. Then Microsoft declared that there were three Windows Mobile variants–Windows Mobile Classic, Windows Mobile Professional, and Windows Mobile Standard. As for the devices themselves, Steve Ballmer declared in February of this year that they’d be known henceforth as Windows Phones–scratch the “Mobile.” Except for the fact that the OS is still Windows Mobile. Got that?What they should have been called: Melvin. Or just about anything else, really, as long as it didn’t keep changing.

2000: .NET. In the mid-1990s, critics accused Microsoft was accused by many of being slow to jump on the Internet bandwagon. By the dawn of the new millennium, however, it was firmly on board–and in June 2000, it unveiled a vision for online services it called .NET. As originally articulated, .NET addressed consumers, businesses, and developers, and it involved everything from programming languages to an online version of Microsoft Office to calendaring and communications services to a small-business portal to stuff for PDAs, cell phones, and gaming consoles. It was so wildly ambitious, so all-encompassing, and so buzzword-laden that it pretty much defied comprehension, at least if you weren’t a professional geek. Which the company seemed to realize–it quickly stopped pushing the concept to consumers, instead restricting it to programming tools.

What it should have been called: How about “Virtually Everything Microsoft Does Involving the Internet From This Day Forward,” or VEMDIFTDF for short? Or what if Microsoft had simply declared that it was now Web-centric, period–no new branding required?

2000: Windows Millennium Edition. Microsoft couldn’t call this successor to Windows 98 “Windows 2000″ because it had already assigned that name to Windows NT’s replacement. So the company saddled the OS with a name that was both pretentious and goofy, and gave it the overly adorable (and badly capitalized) nickname “Windows Me.” It was probably bad juju: The product itself went on to be widely reviled as slow, glitchy, and insubstantial; and to this day its name rivals that of Microsoft Bob as shorthand for “crummy software.”

What it should have been called: Windows 2001, especially if Microsoft marketing had assembled an ad campaign involving HAL 9000 and/or apes hurling things at an obelisk. Bonus virtue: That name would have given Microsoft an excuse to delay the OS for six months to fix bugs.

Hulu Sucks. Really.

Okay. I know its not professional to say it, but I’m going to. Why must this company try so damn hard to make life difficult for the people who want to use their content? Oh that’s right. There’s this. Once again, the company is trying to dictate how and where you may watch the content on your site.

Let’s call it DRM — web style — because that’s pretty much what it is. Hulu is now taking steps to encrypt the HTML that they send to the browser, which in turn is decrypted at the client using JavaScript and DHTML. In plain English: if you’re not using a browser, you’re out of luck.

This is a bold-faced attempt at preventing any non-browser client (ahem, Boxee) from using its content in a way the company doesn’t approve of. Doesn’t matter what you the viewer may prefer, it’s Hulu’s way or the highway.

Bad news for Hulu, though — people have already found a way around this newest functionality — and Boxee is for all intents and purposes using a browser within its applicaiton to serve Hulu videos to you.

Given this content provider’s past history, its all but certain they’ll continue to try to thwart Boxee and others. After all, it directly threatens ZillionTV which in a shocker is supported by NBC Universal and News Corp, the two chief content providers to Hulu.

See, these two network’s sudden snub of Boxee was all planned. I just wish Boxee and others would stop being so nice to these people — its become abundantly clear they have no intention of being nice back.

Until Hulu stops this behavior, I’m no longer interested in using their service.

AT&T’s Fifty-Buck Laptop

What do you do after everybody in the country has already signed up for a two-year contract to get a cheap cell phone? Looks like AT&T thinks that signing them up for a two-year contract to get a cheap netbook might be the next step. The company has announced that it’s experimenting in company-owned stores in Atlanta and Philadelphia with various package deals for mobile broadband and DSL service, some of which involve subsidized netbooks (or “mini laptops” in AT&Tspeak). Sign up for both mobile broadband and DSL for two years, and the cheapest of AT&T’s netbooks goes for $49.99.

The deal reduces the cost of the computer to half of what RadioShack charges for its discounted netbook. Of course, since AT&T’s offer requires both mobile and home data plans, the monthly cost is a lot higher.

The most interesting thing about AT&T’s test–other than the prospect of buying a computer for less than the price of a high-end steak–is that it’s not limited to one model from one company: It’s selling an Acer Aspire, two Dell Minis, and the LG Xenia, as well as Lenovo’s ThinkPad X200 (a full-sized ultraportable laptop). If it likes what it learns in Atlanta and Philly and rolls the offers out nationwide, your local AT&T store could end up devoting a meaningful amount of its floor space to computers. I’m still wary about committing to contracts to get cheap hardware–especially cheap hardware in categories that are evolving as rapidly as netbooks are–but I’ll be interested to see if these offers make sense to enough consumers to make them worth AT&T’s while.

Palm Pre, Meet Palm OS

I’m in Las Vegas at the CTIA Wireless show, but one of the day’s more intriguing tidbits of phone-related news was announced back in San Francisco at Web 2.0 Expo: Palm will be working with MotionApps, a third-party developer, to make Classic, a Palm OS emulator available for its upcoming Palm Pre phone. The move makes sense given that Palm surely wants to devote all its mental bandwidth to its new webOS, but there are surely a fair number of long-time Palm users out there for whom the idea of running existing apps on the Pre is an appealing security blanket. (The whole scenario is roughly similar to what Apple did with the early versions of OS X, which had the capability to run old Mac OS apps in emulation mode.)

I confess to a basic innate skepticism when it comes to emulators in general: None of them run everything perfectly, and most of the power of the Pre, like that of the iPhone, will come from its integration of new hardware, software, and services. And many of my favorite old Palm apps don’t even run that well (or at all) on modern Treos–they were too tied to the guts of earlier versions of the Palm OS. But MobileApps says it’ll publish a list of compatible Palm OS apps, and I’ll be on the lookout to see how comprehensive it is.

Palm’s news today also involved details relating to the rollout of Mojo, the webOS SDK, to developers. Ultimately, getting that right will be ten thousand times more important to the Pre’s fate than a Palm OS emulator could ever be.

Nintendo of America Prez Says No to Microtransactions

We recently gave Sony the what-for over its views on the iPhone (not a PSP competitor, a marketing exec said), and thanks to Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat, it’s Nintendo’s turn to squirm under similar questioning.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime also shows no worries. In short, he says Nintendo’s network of 18,000 DS developers can make better products than the “home-brewed” offerings at the App Store (Um, but what about all the pro developers praising the iPhone?). As with Sony’s argument that it makes hardcore games for serious gamers, I don’t think brushing off the competition is the best strategy, but I’ve already said my piece about that.

Instead, here’s something new: Asked about the iPhone’s recent support for microtransactions — the little extra gaming items you can buy on top of an initial purchase — Fils-Aime said Nintendo is against them. The quote, in part:

“Having talked to a lot of consumers in our market, the consumer wants to pay just once for their overall experience. I’ve heard complaints when consumers buy maps or extra levels. From a Nintendo perspective, we believe selling a game that is fair to the consumer and charging them once instead of multiple times is the best business model.”

As one of the developers in the PocketGamer story cited above says, the pressure is on to keep iPhone games cheap, so naturally there will be lots of in-game content for sale as devleopers try to bring in more revenue. The DS and PSP aren’t shackled by those initially low price points, and with Nintendo’s apparent commitment not to nickle-and-dime the consumer, I’m curious to see which business model will prove more successful.

Facebook’s Problem is the Management

Shockwaves were felt throughout Silicon Valley when the social networking site announced that one of its star hires, CFO Gideon Yu, had been fired. Although Facebook claims that it is looking for someone with “public company experience,” (ludicrous because Yu held executive positions with Google (YouTube) and Yahoo), industry insiders say it was very much an inside job.

See, Yu apparently did not care much for Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg–Facebook’s star Google hire–and increasingly was not seeing eye to eye with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to our friend and colleague Kara Swisher. That adds up to a lot of internal infighting, and not a need for a CFO with more experience.

Reportedly, Yu left the company immediately after a meeting, symbolistic of Zuckerberg’s apparent “you’re with me or against me” mentality. But the way Facebook framed the departure is troubling.

Facebook has made it no secret that it would like to go public, and the company is attempting to say letting go of Yu was a step in that direction. That kind of logic is faulty.

Zuckerberg needs to learn if he wants to take his company public that investors do not like turmoil. The revolving door of executives at Facebook will make investors uneasy, and reluctant to invest in the company.

No slight intended at the young CEO, but I think this is where his youth comes as a major negative. Being young myself, I know that sometimes we make judgments more based out of emotion rather than thinking them through first.

I can’t see that Mark’s much different than me. Wisdom does come with age, and I think we learn that sometimes its best to surround yourself with people who may not see eye to eye with you all the time. Keeps your mind open.

Surrounding yourself with “yes men” is never a good thing. I’m beginning to think financing and lack of users will never kill Facebook, it will be the management itself.

Why Your Notebook Battery Life Never Quite Seems Equal to the Claims

[A NOTE FROM HARRY: Please welcome Patrick Moorhead of AMD to Technologizer's roster of contributors. He'll be writing both topics relating to his day job and others that simply stem from his experiences as a gadget enthusiast.]

Do you ever feel like the actual battery life on your notebook never quite equals the information that appears in promotional material? For example, you may see “up to five hours,” but actually get about half that.  Well, you aren’t alone.  I hear it all the time, and if you do a quick Twitter search on the topic, you’ll see lots of discussion.

I can assure you that no devious plot exists to mislead you. It really comes down to a few simple factors.

#1: Measurements are best case: Like a car’s “highway miles per gallon” which gauges the best case (cruising at a sustained speed for an extended period without stop-and-go driving), notebook battery life is typically based on MobileMark 2007. This benchmark primarily measures battery life while the notebook is doing nothing–not even wirelessly connecting to the Internet. A “city-driving” equivalent of notebook battery life doesn’t exist…yet.

#2: Different strokes for different folks: We all use notebooks differently, and therefore will see different battery durations.  Some watch HD web videos on YouTube, some may just do email, and some play more games than others. all of which will mean varying battery life.  You can see this data from AMD here that shows the phenomenon.  (Disclosure: I work for AMD) This also shows that battery life varies depending on the combination of components inside a machine.

#3: Battery life varies over time: The longer you own your notebook, use it, charge, and recharge, over and over again, the more the battery loses its effectiveness.  So theoretically, your longest battery life will be on the first day you crack open the packaging.  See all the people selling new batteries for old notebooks?  Some even say that battery life is variable with heat.

So what should you do?

• Grade battery life on a curve–let’s say, 60% of the claimed performance. If the label says 10 hours, my guess is it’s probably only about 6 hours in real use.
• Ask your retailer and systems providers to provide the “city miles per gallon,” or, using the tried and tested cellphone analogy, “talk-time.” They all have Web sites–and when all else fails, you can ask them over Twitter.

I may have not added back 40% of your battery life, but hopefully you know why you only get 60% of it!

Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. You can find him on his AMD blog, Twitter, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions.

1Word for April 1st, 2009

[NOTE: Response to Technologizer's 5Words has been terrific, but many readers have told us that they think even five-word descriptions of stories are too wordy and wasteful. So as of today, we're relaunching the feature as 1Word. Terse enough for ya? If not, we'd be happy to go to monosyllabic words. 0Words would be doable, too. Just let us know.]

Uneventful.

Imitative.

Multilingual.

Fired!

Banned.

Tiny.

Fraudulent.

Bankrupt.

Amusing!

Buggy.

Downsizing.

Android?

Android May Start Appearing on Netbooks

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that HP and other manufacturers are considering using Google’s Android on netbooks. HP has confirmed the report, saying it is considering using the OS, however has made no final decisions on the matter. Asustek and Dell are also said to be considering similiar moves.

Using Android on netbooks does not come without pitfalls. While Linux graced early models, manufacturers turned to Windows to allow the devices to run popular programs, and in turn make them more marketable.

However, at the same time, Windows is expensive to put on the netbook. As these devices sell at prices typically well below $500, a non-Windows model could viably sell for under $200, say analysts.

There is no charge to use Android at the moment, a move by Google to spur quick adoption of its product.

Will it work? I’m guessing it probably won’t, unless Google can figure out how to overcome the software hurdle. While these PCs are cheap, consumers have shown a preference for the familiar, and putting Windows on these netbooks have proven to be the kick in the pants netbooks needed.

Heck, I’m a Mac guy and I have seriously been considering an Acer Aspire One everytime I walk by it at Wal-Mart. The price is attractive, and that would be great for conferences.

Technologizer’s First Forty-Five Fabulous Years!

Has it really been forty-five years this week since Technologizer’s debut? Why, it seems like just a few months. But it’s true–we’ve been covering technology since April, 1964, when CPU speed was measured in picohertz and “satellite radio” was something the CIA used to spy on Castro.

From our humble beginnings to our present-day state–which is arguably even more humble–it’s been a wonderful ride. After the jump, a few mementos and memories.

Continue reading this story…