Return of the Android Set-Top Box

Just a few weeks back we heard noise of Google heading into the set-top box space. With DISH Network. At the time, it wasn’t clear if this was merely a rehashing of the upcoming DISH apps or a more significant Android set-top platform play. As it turns out, it does look like Google aims to conquer the television with a dedicated offering. And why wouldn’t they take their open source platform and ad serving business to a larger screen? Following in the footsteps of Yahoo TV, Google has also partnered with Intel and is going with the generic “Google TV.” Beyond DISH, other likely launch partners include Sony and Logitech. Although no concrete functionality, timing, or pricing has been revealed. From the NY Times:

For Google, the project is a pre-emptive move to get a foothold in the living room as more consumers start exploring ways to bring Web content to their television sets. Based on Google’s Android operating system, the TV technology runs on Intel’s Atom chips. Google has built a prototype set-top box, but the technology may be incorporated directly into TVs or other devices.

Continue reading this story…

It’s Inevitable: Google TV

The New York Times’ Nick Bilton is reporting that Google, Intel, Sony, and Logitech are collaborating on a new platform for Internet-enabled TV called…Google TV, of course. Bilton doesn’t have a lot of detail, but he says that it’ll be an open-source platform that can run third-party apps; that it will include Google search; that it will run the Android OS and Chrome browser on Intel’s Atom processor; and that Logitech is working on remote controls, including one with a tiny QWERTY keyboard. Google has a prototype box, but the technology could be built into TVs; consumer products may arrive as soon as this summer.

It would have been startling if Google didn’t try to something along these lines, given that TV remains one of the most important screens in the lives of millions of people, and one without any Google presence to date. And nobody’s figured out how to build an Internet TV platform that’s truly a breakout hit–even Apple, which famously keeps insisting that Apple TV is a mere hobby. Roku and Vudu are both pretty nifty, but neither is close to becoming a household name.

Continue reading this story…

Kindle Arrives on the Mac

Amazon has released its Kindle for Mac software, letting OS users get at all those e-books in Kindle format. It should be a boon to anyone who has a Kindle, has bought books for it, and wants to read ‘em on a Mac–but I’m on the road sans Mac at the moment, so it’ll be a few days until I can try it for myself. If you snag it, let us know what you think.

TUAW says it’s “no-frills,” which is a description I’d apply to all the Amazon and Barnes & Noble e-reader apps I’ve tried for every PC and mobile platform. I’d like to see a company with access to as many books as these two release reader apps that are truly slick and full-featured. Maybe Apple? (You gotta think that it’ll make tomes from its iPad iBooks Store available on Macs and PCs eventually.)

At the moment, my main phone is a Droid, so I also await a Kindle reader the Android…something I also suspect is in the works.

Xbox 360 Slim Gets a Big Fat Rumor

Supposedly pictured here is the motherboard for the Xbox 360′s next revision, which hardware aficionados have pinned as evidence of a console redesign.

The photos, which appeared on Chinese message board A9VG, are noteworthy for a couple reasons, as pointed out by Gamespot: It’s a smaller motherboard than ever before, it combines computer and graphics processors on a single chip and it has a SATA interface port instead of Microsoft’s proprietary hard drive port, suggesting that storage will be housed inside the console.

Put all this together with different shapes, sizes and screw locations, and you’ve got a compelling case for the Xbox 360 Slim — if the photos are real, of course.

Brushing aside idle speculation from analysts and, ahem, bloggers, this is not the first actual rumor of a slimmer Xbox 360. In 2008, TG Daily reported that after Microsoft brought its 65 nm “Jasper” chips into production that year, a 45 nm process would be next in line. The rumor held that Microsoft would release a redesigned console, with GPU and CPU on a single chip, in 2009. Obviously, the timing didn’t pan out, but the rest of the report just got a new lease on life.

Technical details aside, a redesign wouldn’t be a surprise this year, with Microsoft planning to release its motion-sensing camera, codenamed Project Natal, during the holiday season. With that extra peripheral taking up space on TV stands, new console buyers could use the extra room. Besides, the Xbox 360 is starting to look a little bulky next to the PS3 Slim.

If Microsoft is planning to launch a slimmer Xbox 360, don’t expect to hear anything official until just before the console goes on sale. In the meantime, do expect the usual fuzzy product shots and cryptic claims from anonymous sources.

Replacing the CableCARD Regime

For about a year, and as directed by Congress, the FCC has been working on their (our) National Broadband Plan. With the goal of ensuring access while maximizing usage and potential. Whatever that may mean. But hopefully does not include Chatroulette. As you might imagine of a government report, the newly released National Broadband Plan covers a lot of territory. So instead of reading each of the 376 pages, take a look at DSLReports for some consumer-centric highlights. You might also want to hit Engadget for a few corporate responses. However, given our general focus here, I wanted to address the cable-co…

Section 4.13 discusses the current CableCARD landscape and associated challenges. Specifically, they address the SDV hurt fest, pricing obfuscation, “installation” hoop jumping, and CableCARD certification burden. And the FCC would like to see this all cleaned up by the fall. This year. It’s certainly a goal we can get behind. But, yeah, good luck with that.

Continue reading this story…

Coming Soon: Nexus One on Sprint

Sprint has announced that Google will sell a Sprint version of the Nexus One “superphone,” with details to come soon:

“Nexus One is a powerful device that belongs on a powerful network. This is another step in our continued partnership of innovation with Google,” said Fared Adib, Sprint vice president of product development. “Sprint customers already have the option of two amazing Android devices with Samsung Moment(TM) and HTC Hero(TM). It is a natural fit for us to add Nexus One to the list of choices available for Sprint customers who want the best value in wireless with the best in Android.”

It’s a tad odd that Sprint is spreading the news before it’s ready to talk pricing, but maybe it wanted to give a heads-up to its customers who craved a Nexus One before they jump to another carrier. And while the Moment and Hero may be nice phones, the Nexus One will easily be the sexiest Android device available for Sprint; for the moment, at least, Sprint is letting Google sell a Sprint phone that trumps the ones available in its own stores.

With the T-Mobile Nexus One, the new AT&T-compatible one, and Verizon and Sprint ones on the way,  folks who want a Nexus One will be able to get ones that work on every major U.S. carrier. (AT&T customers will have to pay $529, since there’s no subsidized version; I’m assuming that Verizon and Sprint customers will be able to get one cheap with a two-year contract, although I don’t think that’s official.)

For all the controversy over Google competing directly with its own partners, it’s doing a good job of getting the Nexus One onto all the big U.S. networks.  Given that the phone doesn’t appear to be a blockbuster yet, maybe the rest of the industry has concluded that it doesn’t need to fear the Googlephone after all…

Today’s Tech, Predicted in 1960 by a Bad Cartoon

Here’s a 1960 Paramount cartoon about future tech that predicts the Roomba and Skype–and therefore reminds me of the eerily accurate/hilariously off-base 1940s whiskey-ad predictions I discovered a couple of months back.

(Via Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew)

Apple Banning Protective Film From Apple Stores?

I don’t apply film to the screens of my phones–it’s hard to get on properly, and I’ve found that the iPhone screen is impressively sturdy without special protection–but Apple’s alleged decision to stop sales of such products at the Apple Store is still curious.

Digital Magazines: Prototypes, Questions, and Realities

On Monday, I was at South by Southwest in Austin, where I attended a panel in which representatives from Wired magazine and Adobe discussed their prototype of a digital-magazine version of Wired. Then on Tuesday, I attended the Future of Publishing Summit in New York, where the Wired prototype was once again the subject of a session.

Continue reading this story…

MySpace User Data For Sale

Social networking just became a little riskier to your privacy. Information from MySpace is now for sale to third parties ranging from academics and analysts to marketers.

The data will include any activity or information that is attached to an account. That includes blog posts, location, photos, reviews, and status updates–among others. InfoChimps, an Austin Texas company that collects and sells structured data, is selling the data.

Of course, MySpace is perfectly within its rights to work with Infochimps, because it legally owns the data and the server logs. Users wave their right to privacy in exchange for free Web hosting and access to its social features. “Free” comes at a cost. Here’s snippet of what “they” know about you.

This is exactly the type of scenario that Eben Moglen, a Columbia University law professor and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center warned of at a seminar about privacy in cloud computing last month. Except I wouldn’t have imagined that MySpace would be one of the really aggressive purveyors of personal data.

In his talk, Moglen advocated for the development of peer-to-peer social networks where users retain ownership of their data. His suggestion is looking more appealing (and prophetic) now that one of the biggest names in social networking has sold out its users’ privacy.

[NOTE: The original version of this story stated that MySpace was selling data; in fact, Infochimps is the seller, through a revenue-sharing agreement with MySpace. MySpace has released the following statement:

MySpace is not selling user data to Infochimps. MySpace provides developers, including companies such as Infochimps, with free access to publicly available real-time data (such as status updates, music, photos, videos) using our Real Time Stream feed. We have identified the need for third-party developers who can’t handle the size of our full feed to still have access to the data in a different format.  For this reason Infochimps is offering developers a pre-packaged version of our Real Time Stream, as a value-added service.

More information is available at Infochimps' blog.]

The PSP Go: Toast?

Based on some mysterious guesswork, gaming trade publication Gamasutra came up with some grim numbers for Sony’s PSP Go handheld: 6,000 to 10,000 units sold in the United States last month.

Sony has never released any official sales numbers for the PSP Go, a console that’s smaller and lighter than its predecessors and only supports downloaded games. But last week, Japanese industry watchers Media Create said 1,275 PSP Go device were sold in the first week of March. Regardless of the exact number, it’s safe to say the Go isn’t doing well. Gamasutra believes that Sony will launch a next-generation handheld this year and let the Go “experience a slow death at retail.”

That seems to be happening already. I used to see ads for the PSP Go all around Los Angeles, but no more. And the Go is conspicuously absent from Sony’s announcement of an upcoming PSP bundle for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. You won’t see much love for the Go at GameStop’s Web site or stores, either. A rumor from February held that Sony was going to relaunch the Go with a reduced price, but so far, nothing.

I believe the PSP Go’s commercial troubles are due to several errors on Sony’s part, rather than one major problem. The $250 price point is hard to justify when the $170 PSP-3000 has all the same features, albeit in a larger size. Existing PSP owners were alienated because they couldn’t transfer their UMD games onto the device. Bad reviews didn’t help — those from Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera and Destructoid’s lovably-vulgar Jim Sterling stuck in my head for noting how unfriendly the device was to its users.

But while it’s tempting to knock the PSP Go’s underlying concept — a download-only handheld that precludes people from buying and selling used games — I don’t think Sony was wrong to pursue it. Apple proved with the iPod Touch that a download-only device can find commercial success. Sony just erred on the execution, not on the idea.

The Nexus One Gets AT&T Friendly

When Google released its Nexus One “superphone” back in January, it was available in both a subsidized version locked to T-Mobile and a $520 unlocked one. But even the unlocked one wouldn’t work on AT&T’s frequencies at 3G speed. Which left it as a sort of pseudolocked phone: Almost nobody would choose to buy it and use it on AT&T rather than T-Mobile.

Now Google has a new version of the Nexus One that’s compatible with AT&T 3G.  It’s not an “AT&T Nexus One,” exactly: It’s only available as a $529 unlocked phone, and Google appears to have no marketing relationship with AT&T. But given how crippled AT&T’s own first Android handset is, the AT&T-friendly Nexus One is currently the coolest Android phone that’ll run on that carrier. By far. And it’s also the first new AT&T-ready handset to remotely rival the iPhone for general sex appeal.

Of course, at $529, it’s a phone with an even more limited market than the apparently slow-selling existing Nexus One. But I’m especially curious about one thing:  Will the people who spring for it find it to work any better on AT&T’s network than the iPhone 3GS does?

Harry Elsewhere on the Web This Week

I’m in chilly New York rather than rainy San Francisco right now. And while I’m here, I’m guesting on two Web video broadcasts you might want to catch:

* At 1pm ET on Thursday, I’ll talk about collaborative tools–their potential and pitfalls–on a BusinessWeek Webcast. You can sign up for it here.

* At 3pm ET on Friday, I”ll join Fox News’s Clayton Morris as one of the guests on his Gadgets and Games show, part of FoxNews.com’s Strategy Room.

Two very different topics–but I plan to have fun discussing both of ‘em…

Microsoft Previews the Revamped Internet Explorer 9 Platform

What’s Microsoft planning for Internet Explorer 9? There’s a lot the company isn’t ready to talk about, including what sort of new features it’ll have and when it’ll be available. But at the MIX10 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft is telling Web developers about the new capabilities that IE9 will provide, and it’s giving them the ability to get some hands-on experience with them for the first time. (Along with other tech journalists, I was prebriefed late last week.)

It’s doing so via a piece of software it calls the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview, along with a Test Drive site (which doesn’t seem to be live yet) with sample content for viewing in the Platform Preview or any browser. This isn’t a full-fledged IE9 beta: It’s a stripped-down window, and all it can do is render Web content.

Continue reading this story…

Marvell Shows a New Android Tablet Design

I’m spending the day at the Future of Publishing Summit in New York City, a conference on the digital transformation of books, magazines, and newspapers. The room is packed with execs from the New York publishing industry, plus a few Silicon Valley types. Among the latter are the folks from chipmaker Marvell, who are showing off some prototype devices based on the company’s low-cost, power-efficient Armada processors.

The newest of these is a reference design for a 10.1″ Android-based color tablet that Marvell just finished putting together. Here it is:

As a reference design, this (rather chunky) tablet is mostly about technological guts rather than industrial design: I’d expect the companies who build devices based on it to make them sleeker and sexier.

Marvell says that it expects tablets based on this design to go on sale by the end of this year. It’s not talking about pricetags yet, but with the iPad starting at $499, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the starting price for tablets from other companies will be substantially lower. Manufacturers should certainly be able to sell an Armada-based tablet running the free Android OS for less than a “Slate PC” running full-blown Windows 7.

Marvell’s version runs Android in a form that looks pretty much like the Android on phones such as the Nexus One and Droid, only on a bigger, higher-resolution display. Assuming that tablets are here to stay, I hope that Google–or someone–builds an Android interface that was designed with big touchscreens in mind. Despite the theory that the iPad is merely a big iPhone, the most interesting thing about it is that Apple went to the trouble of designing a new interface tailored to its needs. I don’t think tablets running a stock copy of Windows 7 or Android are going to be anywhere near as interesting as ones that rethink the experience for a new class of gizmo.

Windows Phone 7 Series: No Full Multitasking

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Series OS may not look much like the iPhone, but the platforms have a number of philosophical similarities. Including the fact that only Microsoft’s only own apps will be allowed to run in the background. (At least at first: Microsoft, unlike Apple, says it intends to let third-party programs multitask eventually.)