PS3 Gets Into Streaming Video With Vudu

Microsoft and Sony are in the midst of a video feature war on their respective game consoles. The Xbox 360 was first to get Netflix streaming. The Playstation 3 followed, and now includes access to Hulu Plus as well. Sony got into live sports with baseball and hockey. Microsoft tacked on ESPN3. The Xbox 360 got streaming video on demand from the Zune Marketplace, and now, Vudu is doing the same for the PS3.

On November 23, Vudu will be available as a free app from the Playstation Network. The service has over 4,000 HD movies for rent or purchase, streamed instantly, including its own HDX format for 1080p video. The PS3 app will support Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound, and owners of the Playstation Move motion controller can use it as a pointer for Vudu’s interface. Rentals on Vudu cost between $1 (for some standard-def movies) and $6, and purchases cost $5 to $25.

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Ooma Telo: The Anti-MagicJack

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Ooma Telo

Price: $249.99

Ooma may be a VoIP system, but it’s got a spin that doesn’t bear much resemblance to something like MagicJack. It’s built around a classy-looking box which you plug into a telephone and your home network. Calls are in what the Ooma folks call “high definition” quality. Once you’ve paid for the device, US calling is free (a $9.99/month upgrade, Ooma Premier, adds features such as call forwarding, simultaneous ringing, and a second line). And options let you use your cell phone with the Ooma box or use your iPhone with an Ooma number over any 3G or Wi-Fi network.

Other VoIP options such as Vonage don’t involve a big-ticket piece of hardware, but do require monthly charges–Vonage is $25.99 a month. The Ooma folks are hoping that you’ll do the math and decide it makes sense to pay up front for the hardware. Is anyone reading this an Ooma customer?

Ask.com Lives!

In my new Technologizer column for TIME.com, I write about Google alternatives, including Bing and Blekko. I also say I’m sorry there aren’t more of them: Among both big longtime Google rivals and startups, there seems to be a widespread assumption that Google has the search-engine market locked up and investing in core search-engine technology is therefore pointless.

One of those big longtime Google rivals is Ask.com, which announced last week that it’s going to cease work on its own search engine, use one provided by an unnamed third party, and focus on its Q&A service. Yesterday, I met up with Ask CEO Doug Leeds here at the Web 2.0 Summit conference in San Francisco, and we talked a bit about the company’s change in focus.

Leeds, first of all, said that he was sorry that it didn’t make sense for Ask to continue to build its own search engine from scratch. He pointed out, accurately, that Ask had a history of doing inventive stuff that later showed up in in its larger competitors. (Parts of this 2007 Ask redesign look like a blueprint for Google and Bing in 2010.) He said that made it tough for a smaller site such as Ask to compete based on pure innovation, and factored into the company’s decision to outsource search.

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SlideRocket Does HTML5

SlideRocket, the nifty Web-based collaborative presentation service, is built in Flash. But it’s rolling out an HTML5 player that lets people view SlideRocket shows on Flash-free devices such as the iPad. Here’s a video about the news from Robert Scoble.

Finally! The iPhone Google Voice App

So this is today’s unforgettable iTunes-related announcement! Google’s Google Voice app for the iPhone has been approved–I don’t see it in the App Store on my iPhone just yet, but it’ll presumably show up shortly. And I can’t wait.

The approval ends well over a year of odd limbo for the app, during which Apple was supposedly pondering the implications of approving it and the FCC stepped in. Then Apple loosened/clarified its acceptance policies, and unofficial Google Voice apps started showing up a couple of months ago. Today’s news ends the whole melodrama–and it would be nice if it were one of the last major stories involving App Store acceptance controversies, period.

Google Hotpot Advances the Assault on Yelp

For a while, Google’s been morphing its local business directory into a Yelp rival, but Google Hotpot is the most obvious offensive yet.

The big problem with Google’s local results, up until now, is their reliance on reviews from other Websites. Sure, Google has its own ratings and reviews, but for any given business, links to Yelp, UrbanSpoon and other sites are more prominent. And rightfully so; those sites have far more user participation than Google does on its own.

Hotpot is an attempt to build Google’s review database a lot faster, while also making it more social. Continue reading this story…

Engadget’s Nookcolor Review

Engadget’s Josh Topolsky has a Barnes & Noble Nookcolor. He doesn’t absolutely love it, but he does give it a generally upbeat review.

Gizmodo Uncovers Naked TSA Scanner Images

I really hope the outrage over the TSA’s new scanners and frisking policies–and, just as important, investigative reporting like this–continues until the government has no choice but to make changes.

PlayBook Browser vs. iPad Browser

RIM teases the BlackBerry PlayBook with a video that actually shows a real BlackBerry PlayBook.

It’s Official!

TiVo’s New Pricing: Both Cheaper and Pricier–and Definitely More Confusing

TiVo, the original personal TV box, is facing new competition from Apple TV, Roku, the Boxee Box, Logitech’s Google-based Revue, and other Johhnie-come-lately gizmos. Most of them cost less than TiVo, and none of them require a monthly fee. And the company is responding with a holiday offer–good through December 31st–that brings the price of a TiVo box from $299.99 down to $99.99, the same amount you’d pay for an Apple TV or Roku’s midrange version. It’s calling this an “instant savings” of $200. And there’s even an option to pay nothing up-front at all.

Except…it’s nowhere as simple as that. Actually, figuring out how much TiVo costs, and which version to buy, just got more confusing.

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Can’t Buy Me So Many Other Things

Apple’s home page is saying that the company is going to make an announcement that we’ll never forget. It involves iTunes and will occur at 7am Technologizer time. I hate to make Apple predictions, but I’m not above agreeing with ones made by others, and the idea that this might involve the release at long last, of the Beatles in digital form sounds plausible. In fact, the Wall Street Journal says the deal is done.

Assuming that the news does involve the Fab Four, it’s going to be a relief to never, ever have to write about their absence from the the iTunes Store and legal digital music in general again. (Here’s a ten-year-old PC World column that makes reference to me being ticked off about the subject.) As every rational person who’s ever written about the topic has said, this was a non-problem: Digital Beatles is already on untold computers, music players, phones, and other devices, in ripped form.

So with all the time we’ll save not seething about this, can we devote some energy to being upset about content that isn’t currently available in legal recorded form, period? The Rutles’ wonderful album Archaeology springs to mind. So do three of my favorite movie comedies of the 1960s and 1970s: The Wrong Box, Movie Movie, and Cold Turkey. It’s never been the least bit difficult to listen to the Beatles here, there, and everywhere, but much of our culture is still locked up in studio vaults…

Bummer, Instant Jam is No More

Instant Jam, a Facebook game that happily thumbed its nose at Guitar Hero, Rock Band and record labels, has shut down along with its parent company, InstantAction.

I previewed Instant Jam in August, when it launched as a closed beta. Although the game had some technical hiccups, I was charmed by its ability to let you play your existing music library for free, either on a PC keyboard or with a guitar controller. It was, at the very least, a refreshing antidote to music games that make you pay to perform songs you already own.

Alas, InstantAction announced that it’s winding down operations, which included more than Instant Jam. The company had also sold a game development engine called Torque and was pushing a technology that lets you embed games in a Web browser and play them while they’re downloading. The latter service was likely to be overshadowed anyway by Gaikai, which streams games as compressed video from remote servers (similar to OnLive, but with an emphasis on embedding game trials instead of providing full games).

Instant Jam, it seems, never had time to take off while InstantAction’s other business models failed. I’m hoping someone revives the idea, but it’s unlikely. Music games are not the lucrative venture that they were a few years ago, which might explain why Viacom is trying to unload Harmonix, maker of the Rock Band series. And while a console version of Instant Jam might’ve been a hit, it’s less appealing as a solitary pastime in front of a PC. The game’s defiant approach, however admirable, was too little, too late.

New Facebook Messages: I’m Intrigued! And Apprehensive!

Facebook's Andrew Bosworth and Mark Zuckerberg at today's event

I spent this morning at Facebook’s press event. As expected, it involved the transformation of Facebook’s Messages feature into full-blown e-mail–except that Mark Zuckerberg kept saying that the new service isn’t e-mail. Depending on how you look at things, either he’s right or it’s both e-mail and a whole lot more.

I shared some initial details and impressions over at Techland; now I’m sitting back and wondering when I’ll get to try the new service. (Facebook said that it’ll roll out to users over the course of the next few months, but that those of us who were at the event should get it soon; I tried e-mailing myself at harrymccracken@facebook.com, but it got bounced back.)

(Update: My friend Rafe Needleman has a spare invite and says he’ll send it to me. Bless you, Rafe.)

As I tweeted the proceedings, I was somewhat surprised at the (mostly) negative feedback I got from people who were following along at home. Here’s one representative example:

@harrymccracken Sorry, Harry. Bored. Gmail does it all already.—
Shaya L. (@pickleshy) November 15, 2010

I wasn’t trying to egg on the doubters–okay, I admit that I did mention Google Wave in one tweet–and I have an open mind about the whole thing. But one of the things I like about Facebook Messages in their old form was the utter simplicity–no spam, no messages I’d rather not deal with, no Gmail-style feature overload. I concede that I’m not one of the teenagers who Zuck said inspired these changes, but I hope that new Facebook Messages retains the no-nonsense personality of old Facebook Messages. Like Zuck, I don’t want Facebook Messages to turn into e-mail–but I also don’t want it to stop being Facebook Messages…

Netflix is Kinda Coming to Android, Sorta

Android is the best-selling smartphone platform in the United States right now. Netflix’s streaming video strategy revolves around support for popular devices. So why can’t Android and Netflix get together? Digital rights management, or lack thereof.

In a blog post, Greg Peters of Netflix product development explained that the company really wants to launch on Android devices. “The hurdle,” he said, “has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android.”

In other words, Hollywood doesn’t like the way Android does DRM, and Netflix is powerless without Hollywood’s go-ahead. On the bright side, Netflix will work with individual handset makers to satisfy Hollywood’s needs, so while you won’t see a Netflix Android app any time soon, certain Android phones — and tablets, one hopes — will get their own Instant Watch video players early next year.

I sense a bit of politics at work here.

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Aw, Shucks!

PCMag.com has published a list of its fifty favorite blogs. You’re reading one of them right now….