Archive | June, 2009
Hulu May Start Charging for Content
Shocker. Two big media companies come together to take control of their online video offerings, become quite successful. Attempt to further capitalize by nickel and diming their users even further.
Hulu is considering charging its users to view some content, according to News Corp chief digital officer Jonathan Miller. While he has only been on the job a little over two months now, his words should carry some weight considering he is the head of the venture’s digital strategy.
Miller notes that it is only his own speculation, but “in my opinion the answer could be yes. I don’t see why over time that shouldn’t happen.” This doesn’t mean all of the content would become pay-per-view either: it seems as if Miller is suggesting Hulu may place a premium on select streams.
It really is a shame that Hulu continues to do things that make it seem like the company is out to make a quick buck, or force the user to do things the way they want. Hulu’s Boxee tiff is a perfect example.
Ah well, just gives me another reason not to use it. Since the site’s launch, I’ve visited only three times. I guess with this latest news, it gives me even more of a reason to continue to pass over the service.
Apple Patenting Media Sharing During Phone Calls
4. June 2009
Apple is looking into ways to allow iPhone users to share media during calls, according to a patent filing uncovered by entusiast site AppleInsider. The patent is titled “Methods and systems for mixing media with communications” and says that while media is portable, it still is not easily shared remotely.
Essentially, what the technology would add is an “Add Media” button which would allow the user to share media with another iPhone user on the other end of the line. Users would be able to share music files, video, images, voicemails, and podcasts under this system.
After the media is shared, the sharer has full control over its playback, and can even move to a different media type altogether if they so desire.
What may be interesting to some is the repeated references in the filing to video conferencing on the iPhone. This seems to indicate that future iPhone models will indeed include a forward-facing video camera, if Apple is actually serious about bringing this functionality to the device.
Media sharing is definitely an interesting concept. However, I question how the entertainment industry would feel about this. As prickly as they are, I’d venture to guess they would have some problem with it.
Coming on Monday: Live WWDC Keynote Coverage
4. June 2009
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What’s Apple going to talk about at its WWDC keynote in San Francisco next week? Snow Leopard and iPhone OS 3.0, definitely. New iPhones, quite likely. Tablets and TVs and other dark horses, conceivably. Maybe. Well, probably not. But it’s not completely inconceivable.
I’m looking forward to being surprised–even if it’s by lack of surprise–and will be sitting in the Moscone Center audience as Phil Schiller and others take the stage at 10am PT on Monday. And I’ll provide live coverage of everything we learn as we learn it over at Technologizer.com/wwdc09. (If you’re the type who plans ahead, you can head there right now and sign up for an e-mail reminder.)
Meanwhile, I’m ending our Apple predictions survey at noon PT today, but it’s still open right now–if you haven’t taken it, please do so and get your chance at a $100 Apple gift certificate.
5Words for Thursday, June 4th, 2009
4. June 2009
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Special Palm Pre-free edition!
Tony La Russa’s suing Twitter.
Cheapest MacBook outperforms pricier version.
Sony Ericsson’s green cell phone.
Verizon’s 3G BlackBerry flip phone.
How’s Your Hard Drive Doing?
4. June 2009
Hard drives are about as dependable as a teenager promising to come home by midnight. The more you know about your drive–the brand-specific idiosyncrasies and the diagnostic sounds that drives produce–the better prepared you are for the inevitable crash.
* Hard Drive Inspector is a handy tool to monitor your drives for spin rate, seek time, and almost 20 other potential problem spots. The program also supplies specs–including drive model, firmware version, and serial number, all perfect when calling for warranty support.
The drive’s temperature is displayed in the system tray; if the drive gets too toasty (I have mine set for 120 degrees Fahrenheit), you can get an e-mail alert, or better, automatically put the computer in Standby mode. You can view a summary health report that’s enough for most of us; the S.M.A.R.T. report has the details. Hard Drive Inspector costs $30, but you can download a 15-day trial version to give you a feel for the tool; the trial is fully functional, though limited to one drive. Nonetheless, it’ll tell you everything you’ll need to know about your drive.
Note: At press time (an antiquated phrase if I ever heard one), the Hard Drive Inspector’s site is temporarily down. You can read about the product by looking at a Google cache.
* It’s not as comprehensive as Hard Drive Inspector, but if you’d prefer a freebie (of course you would!), download CrystalDiskInfo. The tool will show you the number of hours logged on your hard drive and give you its health status. If you see caution or bad, cancel all your appointments and replace the drive, like, immediately, even if you don’t hear any weird sounds from the drive.
* If you listen to your hard drive, all you should hear is a soothing, comforting hum. Yet drives often make weird sounds–thuds, screeches, knocking, or whining — and determining if a sound means trouble can be, well, troubling.
DataCent, a data-recovery company, has an extraordinarily helpful site that plays the actual sounds of flaky hard drives: stuck spindles, bad or unstable heads, bad bearings, and bad media, to name a few. You can listen to your specific drive brand, too. Even better, the data recovery company lists typical drive failures by manufacturer. Listen to a Seagate drive with bad heads making a clicking and knocking sound.
[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it's free.]
The Palm Pre Revealed: The Technologizer Review
4. June 2009
Is it possible to out-iPhone the iPhone? Again and again, we’ve seen other manufacturers come up with phones that try so very hard to look and work like Apple’s blockbuster, such as this one, this one, and this one. Some beat the iPhone on specs; none has come close to matching its appeal, imagination, or sales. For all the poseurs out there, the iPhone still feels like a product in a category of one, nearly two years after it first shipped.
But maybe the way to truly rival the iPhone is to counterpunch. What if a phone ignored some of the iPhone’s most obvious virtues, choosing to zig where Apple zagged? What if it aimed to rival not the iPhone’s look and feel but its spectacular record of innovation? What if the overarching goal was to be a really good, really inventive next-generation smartphone?
What, in other words, if it were Palm’s new Pre?
Back at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Palm unveiled the Pre with one of the most startling, sexy demos in tech history. Judging from the time I spent with a Pre this week, the phone lives up to most of its considerable promise. The hardware is quite good, but it’s the software–in the form of Palm’s webOS, the long-awaited successor to the groundbreaking-but-obsolete Palm OS–that makes the Pre so special. And the combination of the two is enough to catapult the Pre into a two-phone race with the iPhone 3G. (I suspect that one or more Google Android phones will be in serious competition before long, but the only Android phone to ship in the U.S., T-Mobile’s G1, is behind the iPhone and Pre by a furlong or two.)
Many people will find reasons to avoid the Pre, from its price ($299, or $199 after $100 rebate with two-year contract) to the fact it launches only on the Sprint network (a Verizon version is supposedly about six months away). Still, even if you never buy one, it’s a significant product. The Pre is so solid in so many areas that I expect multiple aspects of its hardware and software niceties to influence and improve competitive products. Maybe even ones from a company in Cupertino named after a piece of fruit.
5Words for Wednesday, June 3rd 2009
3. June 2009
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Is an evening 5Words acceptable?
David Pogue’s Pre review. Leaked.
And here’s Walt Mossberg’s take.
Engadget weighs in, too. Positively.
E3: The Games, Part 1
3. June 2009
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Press conferences are exciting and all, but E3 is no good if you can’t indulge in all the games everyone’s waiting to play — and all the sensory overload that comes with them.
Here’s what I tried today:
The Beatles: Rock Band: This is just what you’d expect. Music gaming meets rock legends, with fancy peripherals and vocal harmonies. I played guitar on “I Am the Walrus” and contributed the “Woo!” in the chorus, all while trying to admire the psychedelic background images.
Bit.Trip Core: The retro music game doesn’t have the immediate appeal of Bit.Trip Beat, which took Pong to the extreme (download it through WiiWare if you haven’t). Still, the act of matching controller pad presses to an onslaught of incoming dots mesmerizes the senses.
Fight Night Round 4: The last game made me realize there’s more to video game boxing than Punch-Out. Round 4 feels even more like a real boxing match, with smoother and faster slugfests. Droplets of sweat on the boxers have even more detail.
Red Steel 2: After a cool reception to the first game, Red Steel is banking on the Wii MotionPlus for redemption. The game itself is an enjoyable first-person hack-and-shoot, but I can’t get over how a flick of the wrist isn’t adequate for sword attacks. MotionPlus makes you work.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii): Forget golf, I wanted to use the game’s MotionPlus capabilities to play frisbee golf. Backhand and overhead tosses worked as expected, and the strength of the throw really makes a difference. And golf? It was fun, but you can still shoot one-handed.
WET: It’s popcorn shooting in the style of Kill Bill and The Matrix. See: Stranglehold.
Wii Fit Plus: Suprisingly, I enjoyed myself, but thats because of a distinct focus on entertainment this time around. There’s snowball fighting, ball-sorting (which works by simultaneously shifting weight and tipping the Wii Remote) and my personal favorite, the obstacle course, which has you running and jumping in place.
Google Squared is Live. And Interesting. Which is Not the Same Thing as Useful.
3. June 2009
You know how Google self-effacingly claims that some of its cleverest, most useful services are betas or lab experiments? Google Squared is not one of those readier-for-prime-time-than-Google-suggests items. The service–which was demoed a few weeks ago at a Google press event and which went live today at Google Labs–really is experimental. The way it returns search results as a spreadsheet-like grid is wildly inventive. But so far, the most impressive thing about it is that it sort of works, not that it’s terribly useful.
Food 2.0: Takeout Hits the Web
3. June 2009
The Web provides an excellent way to order food online, but it has been costly for a local eatery to process orders from the Web. Restaurants were luddites during the genesis of e-commerce; now, with the advent of new services, mom and pop are online.
Services including Delivery.com, GrubHub, and SeamlessWeb have made it possible for restaurants to do business without incurring the cost of doing alone. Their business models may differ slightly, but restaurants are buying in, and tens of millions of dollars worth of meals are being processed through those sites.
“Everything online has come of age, but the concept of what delivery means to life as convenience and benefit is what people now truly understand,” said Melanie Gordon-Feisman, vice president of communications for Delivery.com. Delivery.com is now located in 75 cities, connecting users to the restaurants that delivery in their area.
Can Aion Dethrone the King of MMOs?
3. June 2009
When NCsoft showed me a demo of their soon-to-launch, massively multiplayer fantasy game, Aion, at the E3 show, I saw a lot of reworked themes common to this fairly mature genre: A pair of at-odds races, each vying to wipe the other from their common home planet; user interface elements familiar to anyone who’s played any of NCsoft’s titles; and a persistent world that’s as dangerous as it is beautiful.
But what I didn’t expect was a discussion about the game’s launch in Asia, which happened some months ago, and how rapidly the game has caught on and expanded in China.
The game’s International Development Manager (international, that is, for South Korea-based NCsoft), Yong Taek Bae, explained that the game’s initial launch broke all kinds of records. On Aion’s Korean launch day, beginning at 6am local time, when the company switched on servers and began allowing paying customers to join the game, 11,000 players signed on each hour. By noon, the company had to turn on four additional servers — in addition to the 21 running at launch–to accommodate the crowd. Each server is capable of supporting 7000 simultaneous players.
Peregrine Gives Players a First-Touch
3. June 2009
In the world of competitive videogaming, speed is everything. So Iron Will Technologies, a gaming hardware maker, decided to bring in some pros to show off its one-of-a-kind input device, the Peregrine. The device is similar to a glove control device currently under development for the military, according to Iron Will CEO Brent Baier.
The left-hand glove is made of thin, stretchy mesh material, and its most immediately obvious feature is the Tron-like circuit traces embedded in the fabric. Essentially, the traces inside the glove act as electronic circuits, called Touch Points. Players can close a circuit by making contact between a touch point and one of three grounding spots — two on the thumb, and one planted across the palm. The first four fingers have five touch points, and the pinky finger has two. A magnetically-connected USB dongle attaches the glove to a Windows PC.
State of the 3D Game
3. June 2009
On the floor of E3, gamers are getting a chance to try a stereoscopic 3D video game for Xbox 360.
Invincible Tiger by Blitz Games is, ironically, a 2D fighting game in the style of classics like Kung Fu and Double Dragon, but with the help of 3D glasses and a compatible HDTV, the various planes of artwork suddenly become much more distinct.
I caught up with Blitz Games’ Chief Technical Officer Andrew Oliver, who laid out where he thinks the technology is going and how his company will be involved.
Basically, the kinds of graphics-intensive games that dominate the show floor are a ways off from working with 3D glasses and TVs. That’s because graphic artists usually “cheat” with special effects like smoke and fire, drawing them in two dimensions. When playing in 3D, the trick becomes more noticeable, in a bad way.
Blitz Games is starting small with Invincible Tiger, which might see a release in the third quarter, and hopes to work up to feature-length games next year. But even then, the studio will stick to cartoon-style games that go easy on special effects. There’s a reason why films are also sticking to that art style, Oliver said.
Of course, there’s also the issue of bringing the 3D peripherals into the mainstream. Glasses and a special TV aren’t cheap, and not all manufacturers are on board. Even then, they’re all working with different standards, and Blitz has to spend about two weeks making each television compatible with its games.
Personally, I want to see this technology integrated with the motion tracking cameras we’ve seen from Microsoft and Sony. Invincible Tiger was cool to look at, but it’s hard to shake the idea that it’s just window dressing. But moving around in a 3D space to play a 3D game? That would just be awesome.
Oliver’s excited about that, too. When I asked him if he’d be interested in working with motion tracking, his eyes lit up. “Absolutely,” he said.
Overpaying With Microsoft Points May Go Away
3. June 2009
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I’m no fan of using Microsoft Points to purchase Xbox Live content. The idea that you can only purchase preset amounts of points, which are always more than what you actually need, discourages me from shopping the console marketplace altogether.
So I’m happy to hear that Microsoft may give shoppers a way out of that system. When announcing downloadable games over Xbox Live for retail titles such as Bioshock and Mass Effect, the company said users could purchase the game directly with a credit card. That means you won’t have to buy Microsoft Points to get the game. Hallelujah.
I stopped by Microsoft’s E3 booth today and asked Michael Wolf, Xbox Live’s senior marketing manager, whether this could lead to credit card payments for other Xbox Live products. “It’s an indicator that we might, yes,” was his response. Can I get an “Amen?”
It’s easy to see why Microsoft would do away with Microsoft Points for downloading big-budget games: Asking the customer to pony up for thousands of points is not only obnoxious, it can be confusing when trying to add up how many points you need. Furthermore, making shoppers overspend in the process is a deterrent to what the company is probably trying to do with this initiative — sell more Pro and Elite 360s with hard drives.
But once the credit card cat is out of the bag, customers will start asking why they can’t purchase everything directly. That’s why I’m praying for Wolf’s quote to pan out. Until then, there’s always Amazon.
Share Your Apple Predictions, Get a Shot at a $100 Apple Gift Certificate
3. June 2009
Reminder! Reminder! Apple’s WWDC keynote is just days away, which means that the window for making predictions about what the company has up its corporate sleeve is rapidly shrinking. That’s why we need you to take our quick survey, which will let you make predictions about what Apple will announce. We’ll use the collective results for some stories both before the keynote and after. I’m hoping that you guys turn out to be better at guessing what Apple is planning than people who make their living doing so, but it’ll be fun either way.
If you take the survey, we’ll put you in a drawing for a $100 Apple Store gift certificate. Click here to take the WWDC Prediction Challenge.
Related plug: I’ll be attending the WWDC keynote and will provide live coverage of what we learn as we learn it at www.technologizer.com/wwwdc09.
Apple’s Fifth Avenue Store a Revenue Driver
3. June 2009
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For anybody who’s been to an Apple Store, the company’s location on Fifth Avenue in New York City is quite the spectacle. Whether it’s the exquisitely-designed glass cube that is the store’s entrance, or the fact you can buy an iPod at 4 a.m., it’s always buzzing with activity.
Thanks to some sleuthing from the New York Post, we now have specifics. A prospectus for the GM Building, which was sold to a Boston-based group last year, listed $440 million in annual sales for the location. If correct, this would be about 10 times higher than the average store.
Furthermore, with $6.3 billion in revenue across the entire chain, it means that 7 percent of Apple’s retail revenues come from this one store. Pretty impressive, eh?
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4. June 2009
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