Seven Questions About the Zune HD

Back on April 10th, our own Ed Oswald reported that he’d confirmed that the rumored Zune HD was real and would ship in the fall.  He spoke the truth–as Cnet’s Ina Fried is reporting, Microsoft confirmed today that it plans to release an iPod Touch-like Zune then. (The company has confirmed it’s called the Zune HD hasn’t yet said what the product’s name will be, or but hasn’t disclosed how much it will cost.)

The new Zune will have:

• A touchscreen;
• A 480-by-272  OLED display;
• The ability to output HD content to a TV;
• A built-in HD receiver.

That’s an intriguing list of specs, and enough to make it clear that Microsoft is building an iPod Touch rival, not a wannabee: While the form factor shown in the art Microsoft released is extremely Touch-esque, no Apple handheld has an OLED screen, HD radio, or HD video output.

Microsoft pre-announced just enough detail about the device to whet the appetite, so I’m left with more questions than answers. Such as the seven I ask after the jump.

Continue reading this story…

Spam, Wonderful Spam

Symantec arm MessageLabs reports that 90 percent of all e-mail traffic is spam, up signficantly from the 58% just six months ago.

At that time, anti-spam efforts had reached their peak, along with the convictions and shutdowns of several major spam rings. However, since that time, spammers have regrouped and pushed spam levels to their highest in at least four years.

Even worse? Spam has shot up 5% in just the past month. Whatever these criminals have done, its certainly working very well. Thanks to the lovely anti-spam efforts of Google Apps and Gmail, I haven’t noticed any difference, but I’m sure those less fortunate probably have.

…. Spam, lovely Spam, wonderful Spam ….

Other findings include new efforts by cybercriminals to use established websites to host malware. Such a strategy would make sense, considering how much easier it would be for these folks to spread their wares. They also seem to be working on US schedules, evident by its peak between 9 and 10am, with a drop off overnight.

And if you think CAPTCHA is saving you (or these providers), think again. Spammers and malware purveyors are now making use of CAPTCHA crackers, meaning this line of defense is becoming increasingly useless.

Breaking: We May Know What the First Letter of the Bing Logo Looks Like!

You know you’re desperate for news about a new search engine when the possibility of one letter of its logo being accidentally revealed merits comment. But what the heck: The ever-enterprising M.G. Siegler of TechCrunch popped into Bing.com, which may soon be revealed to be the home of Microsoft’s replacement for Live Search, and saw that it had a Favicon–a tiny blue-and-orange letter “b.” When he checked again, it was gone.

The logical assumption here is that Microsoft is indeed girding itself to unveil the new service at the D conference this week, and that Bing is indeed the new name. I still think it would be cool if  all the scuttlebutt about the engine being named Bing, Kumo, or Hook was a conspiracy on Microsoft’s part, and it has an entirely different name up its corporate sleeve that nobody’s ever heard. In any event,

Normally, I’m opposed to technology products changing their names–I presume that even the search team at Microsoft would agree that changing a name does nothing to improve a product. In this case, though, the name “Live Search” is so lifeless and confusing that it makes sense to start fresh. I’m not at D, but will chime in again as events warrant.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to cozy up to the name Bing. It’s a sign of my age that it brings pleasantly nostalgic associations to mind, like…well, this:

GTAIV Expansion Dubbed “The Ballad of Gay Tony”

Apparently not satisfied with the level of controversy in video games lately, Rockstar has announced the next downloadable expansion for Grand Theft Auto IV, and it will be subtitled “The Ballad of Gay Tony.”

The add-on will focus on an assistant to the eponymous nightclub owner Tony Prince. Players will “struggle with the competing loyalties of family and friends, and with the uncertainty about who is real and who is fake in a world in which everyone has a price,” according to the press release.

So it’s only a matter of time before someone appears on cable news channels to complain and we start hearing appeals to bar the game from release — all for naught, of course.

Normally, I’d say “let’s not jump to conclusions,” but I’m willing to bet that this expansion pack will offend people because Grand Theft Auto has always relied on stereotypes for its characters. Like Comedy Central’s South Park, GTA is an equal opportunity offender, but instead of relying on satire, it mixes horribly offensive jokes with a thin layer of compassion that gently tugs at the player’s sense of decency.

For that reason, you won’t get a condemnation from me. I’m actually pleased to see Rockstar Games state its intentions so blatantly, especially in an industry whose fear of homophobia (no, that’s not a typo) has repeatedly caused problems. Besides, this is a game for mature audiences. Those who worry for our precious children might first want to check on seemingly innocuous games, like Punch-Out.

Why I Dumped Windows System Restore for ERUNT

I gave up on Windows System Restore. Yep, I turned the feature off and replaced it with a freebie I like better.

System Restore is a recovery tool built into Windows that backs up and restores the Registry. System Restore takes a snapshot of your computer — called a restore point — once a day, as well as before you perform certain tasks, such as installing a new program. If all goes well, you can use a restore point later on to bring your PC back to the state it was in when the snapshot was taken. But remember, we’re talking about computers.

Sometimes System Restore doesn’t work. You click a restore point and Windows has a hearty, gleeful laugh. The problem is that each restore point is linked to previous points; if one is corrupt or missing, you’re out of luck: System Restore won’t work. (Learn more about the ins and outs of System Restore in Bert Kinney’s smart and thorough FAQ.)

Continue reading this story…

Who Needs Photorealism in Games, Anyway?

Just in case the haunting wastelands of Killzone 2 and Gears of War 2 aren’t realistic enough for you, one game engine programmer suspects that true photorealism in video games is 10 to 15 years away.

I say, who cares?

To understand why, read the rest of Unreal Engine programmer Tim Sweeney’s comments to Gamasutra: “But there’s another problem in graphics that’s not as easily solvable,” he said. “It’s anything that requires simulating human intelligence or behavior: animation, character movement, interaction with characters, and conversations with characters. They’re really cheesy in games now.”

To put it another way, we may someday have video game people that look a lot like the real thing in pictures, but making them seem lifelike in practice is another story entirely.

That’s why video games are better off experimenting with other methods of representation besides mimicking reality. (Sports games should get a pass, however, because they are inherently in pursuit of realism. Plus, they tend to avoid issues of interaction and conversation that other games must deal with.)

When I think of the most powerful examples of human emotion in video games, they’re almost always abstract. The pixelated characters in Daniel Benmergui’s Storyteller are excellent examples: The eyes struck a deeper chord with me than any attempt at bone modeling.

Another method is cel-shading, as in the cartoon style seen in games like Team Fortress 2 and No More Heroes. Just like pixelation, cel-shading symbolizes human gestures without dipping into the uncanny valley (that is, the negative response that occurs when a human facsimile looks too much, but not exactly, like the real thing).

I’m certainly not the first one to make this argument, but it’s worth repeating if game developers plan to chase photorealism. I fear that the mountain is so steep to climb, we may have to endure a lot of freaky fake people before getting to the good stuff. As Sweeney suggests, the real problems may take a lot longer than a decade to solve, and10 years is already a long time.

Nokia’s Ovi Store is Up. And Awkward.

Nokia’s answer to Apple’s iPhone App Store launched today on fifty phone models, with more to come. But early reviews range from so-so to brutal:

Today sees the worldwide roll-out of Nokia’s Ovi Store, the company’s response to Apple’s App Store (and other centralized content stores for mobile phones and OS’es), and no doubt the company is watching the launch unfold on a global scale with watchful eyes. Here’s the thing: the launch is an utter disaster and I assume (hope) Nokia executives are outraged with the way things are going.

Nokia has admitted some reliability problems due to the onslaught of interest, but seems to claim that the client software on its phones is performing well.

Even for an Apple innovation, the iPhone App Store’s impact has been startling–a year ago, no mobile platform had an on-phone application platform that was comparable to it, and now it’s absolutely mandatory. And with Apple’s store having ongoing issues of its own, you would think that the company’s rivals have a good opportunity to make up for lost time–but only if they get their stores right, and quickly fill them up with appealing apps.

Also: Is it just me, or does Nokia’s “Ovi” branding seem ungainly and redundant? Why not just “the Nokia Software Store,” or somesuch?

5Words for Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Techwise, it’s a slow day…

iPod Nano to get camera?

Intel, Microsoft dislike big netbooks.

Kids text 80 times daily.

Windows Vista SP2 is ready.

Microsoft’s future visions video, remixed.

Photorealistic games: 10-15 years?

Gotta love this 1878 sign.

Twitter on the Twitter show.

Texting Rotting Teen Brains

As interpersonal commnication dies even further with our ever more voracious appetite for communicating by electronic means, the issue of health is coming back up once again.

Psychologists and physicians are beginning to worry that our teens are becoming distracted, sleep deprived, and even anxious as a result of an increase in the use of texting, the New York Times reports.

Studies are showng that some teens may be sending hundreds of texts every day. With such little time available during the day, you’ve got to think some of these kids are texting well into the night.

Long before texting, Moms were complaining about their kids not getting enough sleep. Their newfound affinity for texting is probably making that much worse. Some doctors are going as far to argue that texting is slowing the seperation process from our parents, as it allows kids to stay in touch with their parents that much easier.

The rise of text messaging is rather recent, so its really hard to say exactly if its having any kind of effect on our health. However, frequent texters are sometimes experiencing issues akin to repetitive stress injuries, especially in the thumbs.

Are we blaming too much on the kids, though? Look at some parents, connected to the world via their BlackBerrys and iPhones. Some of us are just as addicted to our devices, and you know what they say: people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Mac Clonemaker Psystar Files for Bankruptcy

The second-largest manufacturer of OS X computers on the planet can’t pay its bills, which will make it tough to defend itself against Apple’s lawsuit:

Unauthorized Mac clone maker Psystar has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Florida, temporarily slowing down Apple’s legal case against it. The filing may be an indication that the company’s financial backers have pulled out, signaling they see Apple as the clear winner in court.

The bankruptcy documents were filed with the Federal Courts in Florida on Thursday, and Apple’s legal team was most likely made aware of the situation over the Memorial Day weekend.

The Mac Observer says that Psystar will have to disclose who its financial backers are at a June 5th hearing. That should either be really interesting–or put an end to the theory that the tiny company has some corporate Svengali calling the shots.

Craigslist is Newspapers’ Silent Killer

With all of the newspaper industry’s huffing and puffing over Google and other news aggregators, you’d hardly suspect that print journalism has another major problem on its hands.

New research (PDF) from the Pew Internet and American Life Project solidifies what I’ve been hearing for a long time: It’s the classifieds, silly.

Over the last four years, use of online classified services such as Craigslist has more than doubled, Pew’s research found. Almost half of Internet users go online for classifieds now, compared to 22 percent in 2005. Every day, 9 percent of Internet users hit up Craigslist and other online classifieds, compared to four percent in 2005.

The cost to newspapers is immense. After reaching peak revenues of $19.5 billion in 2000, classifieds in American newspapers pulled in less than $10 billion last year. In other words, newspapers have lost half their classified revenue in the last eight years, while online classified use has doubled in half that time.

This begs the question of whether there’s any way for newspapers to stop the bleeding. Last month, I read a stirring essay by Jeff Jarvis about how the industry blew its chance to become a major player in the Internet age. Even if newspaper companies could somehow find a way to keep practicing journalism — Jarvis argues that it’s too late for that, even — I’m not sure the same could be said for classifieds. What could a newspaper offer that Craigslist cannot?

Missing from Pew’s research is any explanation for why online classifieds seem to be cannibalizing newspapers’ business, but it’s got to be that deadly mixture of (mostly) free and immediate. Want to get rid of that dresser today? No need to wait for tomorrow’s paper, and no one else will ask for a cut of the sales. Maybe hyperlocal papers could offer robust classifieds in markets too small for Craigslist to cover, but for cities, the opportunity was lost years ago.

Systemax Scoops Up another Big Brand in Circuit City

Thought you heard the last of Circuit City? Think again.

Systemax completed the acquisition of the rights to the name on May 19, and relaunched circuitcity.com over the holiday weekend. Old customers will begin receive e-mails from the new owners beginning June 9, although they are being given until that time to choose to opt out.

All assets were sold to Systemax for $14 million USD, plus “a share of future revenue generated utilizing those assets over a 30-month period,” a minimum of $3 million USD according to the press release announcing the new site launch.

CircuitCity.com had a message on it for quite awhile promising some new version of the site, although it wasn’t very clear how it would return. The new version seems not much different from the old — it retains the old color scheme and general layout, although it does seem to have a TigerDirect like feel.

It’s new overlords will not honor warranties or service products from the old Circuit City, it should be noted. Regardless, it is moving on with a new mantra for the brand: “Lower Prices, Wider Selection, Faster Shipping, World Class Service!”

(No solace to the 30,000 employees left go, eh?)

Systemax is certainly on a roll — it now owns the two biggest retail names in electronics next to Best Buy: Circuit City as well as CompUSA. The company bought the latter brand last year for about $30 million USD and began reopening select retail locations two months ago.

It appears we won’t see any reopenings of Circuit Citys in the near future, however Systemax is making a smart move in using a very familiar brand name to lure customers in. Yes, it essentially is a reskinned Tiger Direct/CompUSA, but who cares if you’re their shareholders right? Money is money.

The Very First Review of Google?

Last week, I rounded up some of the earliest reviews of Google–most of them positive, none of them predicting what would become of it over the next few years. Karen Wickre of Google saw the story and wrote to clue me in to a piece even earlier than any of the ones I found, which it rediscovered when putting together a tenth anniversary corporate timeline last year. Fittingly enough, it’s by search guru Danny Sullivan (now of Search Engine Land), and it appeared in the August 4th, 1998 issue of Search Engine Watch’s Search Engine Report newsletter:

So how about the results? I think many people will be pleased, especially for the ever-popular single and two-word queries. A search for “bill clinton” brought the White House site up at number one. A search for “disney” top-ranked disney.com, and sections within it like Disney World, the Disney Channel, and Walt Disney Pictures. Yet interesting alternative sites, such as Werner’s Unofficial Disney Park Links, also made it on the list.

Will Google be going commercial? [Co-founder Larry] Page has no opposition to it, but said there’s no particular hurry.

“We’re Ph.D. students, we can do whatever we want,” he said. And what they want is to find the right partners to let them focus on improving relevancy. “I’d like to build a service where the priority is on giving users great results,” Page said.

The whole thing is such an entertaining read that I’m tempted to quote it in its Google-related entirety, but go here to enjoy it.

Microsoft Advertising Its Way to Top of Search

Well, I’m not sure why it thinks it would work any different this time, but Microsoft at it again trying to advertise its way to better search marketshare with the search engine supposedly now known as Bing (previously known as Kumo). Altogether, about $80 to $100 million will be spent to promote the latest reboot, Advertising Age is reporting.

Microsoft will ask consumers to rethink what search is. Instead of directly going after its competitors, it will challenge consumers to think if search really does work as well as they thought.

If it does go as far as reports claim, it would be the largest ad campaign for any search product yet. You’d have to think that the saturation–ads will appear online, on TV and radio, and in the print–would at least cause a good portion of consumers to at least give the new search contender a look.

Consumers are generally happy with their searches. About two-thirds of all users are satisfied with search performance, although four in 10 searches require refinement to get what the user wants.

Bing’s (or Kumo, whatever) challenge if it is going to take on Google in this manner is to eliminate the need for refinement. So far from what we’re hearing it seems that it does seem to answer this to some extent, but it’s not a massive difference.

Neat: New Yorker Cover Painted on iPhone

When you look at this week’s New Yorker cover, you may initially think it was a watercolor. But it’s not — its done digitally, and on top of that, on the iPhone no less.

Artist Jorge Columbo created the New York street scene on a program called Brushes. It is a petite 1.9MB art application available through the App Store.

He stood on 42nd Street creating the scene in about an hour, according to the New York Times.

According to Columbo, he purchased the app after getting his iPhone to keep himself “entertained.” Well, it seems he’s done more than that now that one of his digital works is now gracing one of the country’s most notable arts and entertainment magazines.

Columbo also captured the process of creating the artwork through a special feature within Brushes, which shows his methodical process of creating the scene layer by layer.

(You can see the video at the New Yorker website.)

This cover art will not be the last of the artist’s iPhone artwork. The magazine said it would host a new creation from Columbo each week on its website.

Twitter Inspires a TV Show. A Revolutionary One!

Variety reports that Twitter has inspired an upcoming TV show:

The San Francisco-based web phenom has partnered with Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment to develop an unscripted TV skein described as “putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format.”

I don’t wanna judge a series I haven’t seen–and, come to think of it, probably won’t make time for even if it’s a smash. But Twitter’s celebration of celeb-watching (as seen in its recommendation that you follow Britney Spears and Kim Kardashian) makes me nervous. I have nothing against following the rich and famous via Twitter, but it’s not the thing I’d be proudest of if I’d invented Twitter.

Side note: The Twitter TV series was created by Amy Ephron, whose sisters Nora and Delia came up with 1998′s AOL-inspired You’ve Got Mail–an earlier attempt by Hollywood to cash in on an online trend. It was the first thing that jumped to mind when I read about the Twitter show, even before the Ephron connection dawned on me. Wasn’t 1998 about the time that AOL jumped the shark?