No Verizon iPhone Anytime Soon?

Do these comments by Verizon’s CEO rule out the possibility of a CDMA iPhone being launched on the company’s network anytime soon? Nope. But they’re not a good sign.

Kinect’s Milo Put to Bed?

More than a year old, “Milo” is still Kinect for Xbox 360′s most impressive tech demo. Sadly, Kotaku’s unnamed sources say the project has been cancelled.

The sources say the technology behind Milo will be put to use in another game based on Fable, a series of role-playing games developed by the same studio that put Milo together. But Milo himself is, reportedly, no more.

Milo debuted during E3 2009, when Kinect was introduced under the codename Project Natal. In a video, shown at Microsoft’s press conference, a young boy on the screen interacted with an older girl in real life.  Milo referred to the girl by name, responded to what she said and how she said it, and could even recognize a drawing that the girl showed to Kinect’s motion-detecting camera.

With Kinect due to launch in November, supported mostly by simple, casual games, Milo remains fresh in the mind. It’s a sign of Kinect’s potential even as Microsoft sees fit to mimic the Wii’s stable of sports, exercise and racing games out of the gate.

I’d love to see more than just mini-games from a device that can recognize movement, facial expressions and speech. Hopefully, the supposed Fable tie-in game will do great things, but I’m sad that such a powerful and simple concept — hanging out with an avatar — isn’t coming to Kinect any time soon, even if it’s a little bit creepy.

Good Grief, I Love Norton Internet Security 2011!

On March 21, 1991, I stopped using Norton’s security programs.

But I like to see what the dark side is up to, so I recently switched back to Norton. And I’m really happy I did.

Of course, knowing how you always like to hear the dirt, I’ll tell you the back story.

It was at the March 21, 1991 user group meeting that a Norton rep was showing off the company’s latest antivirus program. “Give these a spin,” I said, handing the guy doing the demo a floppy disk filled with live viruses.

Not an unreasonable request, I thought. But that’s just me.

He avoided making eye contact, wouldn’t look at the floppy, and said “no.” That’s it. To a roomful of 350 computer users. “No.”

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A Brief YouTube History of Blockbuster

With the news of Blockbuster’s bankruptcy, I’m wallowing in Blockbuster nostalgia. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure it’s a temporary condition. But after the jump, a few vintage Blockbuster TV ads–get ready to see lots of shelves packed with VHS tapes in bulky boxes…

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Blockbuster Goes Bust (Surprise!)

Blockbuster has filed for bankruptcy.  The company is staying in business and apparently doesn’t plan to shut down any stores at the moment, but the fact that it’s in deep trouble does not exactly come as a gigantic surprise. Between Netflix DVDs-by-mail and Redbox kiosks and various streaming and download services and cable-TV on-demand services, the whole concept of driving to a large store to rent a movie on a shiny disc is an inherently antiquated concept.

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Is the “Facebook Phone” an INQ Phone?

This version of the “Facebook phone” rumor makes sense: Maybe Facebook is helping on a new model from INQ, which has already made an interesting Facebook-centric social phone.

Leaked HP Slate Video Shows the Trouble With Windows 7 Tablets

A YouTube user apparently got hold of HP’s Windows 7 slate, and while leaked videos like these are usually cause for geek salivation, this one was like a car wreck. I just couldn’t look away from the disaster.

If this is the real deal, it quickly illustrates why Windows 7 tablets are bad news: HP’s slate has a control-alt-delete button. Let that roll around for a minute. Because the keyboard is part of the software, and the software is prone to lock-ups, you need a button dedicated to saving the slate from doom. I can only imagine how awful the control-alt-delete button would play out in stores, which might explain why HP is targeting the Windows slate at businesses. Those chumps will settle for anything if it’s secure!

It gets worse. Shortly after firing up the device (a 30-second process), the demonstrator tries to show off Internet Explorer. “Let’s do a little bit of scrolling,” he says, dragging a finger across the browser window. Except, the window doesn’t scroll. An icon pops up, evidently used to open a new tab. Now, the demonstrator’s fumbling around. He opened the new tab by accident. Now he’s trying to close it. The computer lags behind his commands. This is hard to watch.

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Roku’s New Internet TV Boxes: Better, Cheaper, Smaller–and Ready to Take on Apple TV

How will Roku’s little Internet TV boxes fare in the market against the generally similar new $99 Apple TV which will ship in the next two or three weeks?  We still don’t know. But now we know that Apple will compete with an all-new lineup of Rokus. There’s nothing radical about them, but they sport some nice tweaks to an already appealing gizmo–and all three models deliver more oomph for your buck than the ones they replace.

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Netflix Hires Fake Consumers

How dumb does Netflix think Canadians are?

GOG’s Death Greatly Exaggerated

Silly me. Turns out the temporary closure of Good Old Games, or GOG, was a hoax. GOG, which sells classic video games for modern PCs, apologized for rendering the site and its game downloads unavailable for a few days, and admitted it was all a publicity stunt to announce a site redesign, nothing more.

GetGlue’s TV Check-Ins Now Include Mad Men, Tron

GetGlue is one of a few companies trying to be the Foursquare of multimedia, and believes it can win your check-ins with stickers for popular TV shows.

The company announced a batch of deals today with Hollywood studios and TV stations. GetGlue stickers can now be earned by watching Mad Men and other shows on AMC, House Hunters on HGTV or several MSNBC programs. Folks who see Disney’s Tron: Legacy or Tangled can get stickers as well.

What’s the point, you may ask? That’s where it starts getting interesting.

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Analyzing Ashok Kumar

I’ve said that that analyst Ashok Kumar frequently comes up with scoops that turn out to be anywhere from not exactly correct to flat-out wrong. My colleague Ed Oswald made the same point earlier this week when Kumar said a 7-inch iPad is on its way. So in the interest of fairness, here’s a post defending Kumar by TheStreet.com’s Scott Moritz–a frequent author of stories based on scuttlebutt from the analyst.

Moritz says he’s listing Kumar’s five top tech calls–although by my count, two of them involve predictions that yet to pan out.

Oh No, Not Ads Within Captchas

If you’ve ever stared helplessly into the hazy, jumbled letters of a Captcha, the Wall Street Journal relays some disturbing news: a start up called Solve Media plans to turn these Internet nuisances into advertisements.

Instead of the usual nonsense in the Captcha box, companies will pay to show a message that the user must re-type. For instance, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 ad requires users to type a slogan, “Browse Safer.” Toyota’s ad will will require typing the amount of money the company spends on safety, “a million dollars an hour.” The idea is that if you repeat the message, you’re more likely to remember it — more so than banner ads, which are easily ignored.

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FileMaker Go Gets an Upgrade

A couple of months ago, I wrote about FileMaker Go, the iPhone/iPad version of the venerable database that does such a good job of blending power and simplicity. The company has released a version 1.1 update that makes its mobile offering a bit more powerful still.

Among the changes: The new version lets you e-mail copies of your databases, create PDFs of them for sharing, and insert photos you shoot with an iPhone or have stored on your device. There’s also an intriguing option that lets developers of third-party apps transfer information–such as a bar code–into FileMaker Go. (It’s intriguing partially because it’s easy to forget that there’s any way for iPhone apps to talk to each other at all–it’s neat to be reminded that they can.)

As before, FileMaker Go is $19.99 for the iPhone version and $39.99 for the iPad one, and it’s not a completely stand-alone product–it’s for working with databases created with the Mac or Windows version. (The company also offers iPhone/iPad versions of its more consumery Bento database that can work in completely standalone mode.)

FileMaker Go 1.1 is available at the App Store now.

BlackBerry Tablet Imminent?

Interesting scuttlebutt from the Wall Street Journal: RIM may announce the BlackBerry tablet next week at its developer conference in San Francisco. And both it and future BlackBerry phones will be based on the QNX operating system which RIM bought last year, say the WSJ’s sources.

Why Digital Downloads Are Soaring on PCs, Not Consoles

Traditional PC gaming is in decline, but it’s still way ahead of console games in adopting digital distribution.

The NPD Group has declared that PC games, in the first half of 2010, were more commonly downloaded than purchased on disc. Packaged media still collect more revenue, because of higher average selling prices, but digital downloads account for more sales. (For what it’s worth, some publishers have questioned NPD’s numbers, which are based on surveys and don’t include every retailer, but downloads are growing at any rate.)

PC games enjoy a healthy digital distribution market. Gamers have their pick of online retailers, and can download new releases on the day they become available, or earlier; Blizzard let players download StarCraft 2 ahead of time, needing only to activate the game the minute it went live. Old games continue to live on through these services, and are sometimes available for next to nothing. For example, Steam sold the classic Deus Ex for $2.50 to mark the game’s 10th anniversary.

I don’t have numbers for digital distribution on consoles, but the comparison wouldn’t be fair. Downloadable console games are in their infancy, with limited selections that don’t nearly match what’s available on store shelves. Why are downloads still such a small part of console gaming? Let’s count the ways.

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