Upper Deck Tries to Evolve the Trading Card With LCD Screens

I can’t say my finger’s on the pulse of the trading card beat, but Upper Deck’s upcoming Evolution football cards seem like a neat gimmick.

According to Switched, each “card” measures a half-inch thick, and includes a small LCD screen. A 60-second highlight reel rolls automatically when you open the cardboard flap covering the face of the card.

The Evolution cards arrive on April 12. No idea why Upper Deck is pushing a new kind of football card in the middle of baseball season, but whatever.

It’s funny, because as a childhood baseball card collector, I never associated the decline of trading cards with the rise of personal computers and the Internet. Baseball cards had their own problems, including the strike of 1994 and market oversaturation. I was in early middle school when the market boomed, and I specifically remember being soured by the glut of premium cards, which were expensive for kids my age.

But in hindsight, playing cards are just another example of physical media doomed by digital. The stats on the back of the cards are instantly accessible on a smartphone, as are highlight reels. The very idea of collecting and trading players has been replaced to some extent by fantasy sports. Even if the trading card market hadn’t become oversaturated in the early 1990s, it’d still be in trouble today.

Upper Deck’s new cards won’t change that, of course. They’re just another reminder that no dead-tree media is safe anymore.

YouTube to Expand Live Programming–Gradually

Looks like YouTube is set to take on services like UStream, Justin.TV, and the like — it announced its roll out streaming capabilities to its platform on Friday in a blog post. Simply called YouTube Live, it marks the first time that its technology would be used for live streaming outside of one-off events.

Now don’t dump UStream just yet: “certain YouTube partners” are the first to gain access. YouTube says that the service will gradually be opened up to more and more partners, although it did not specifically say whether or not consumers would be able to use the live streaming. I’d venture to guess this is in the works, but obviously YouTube will need to make sure their servers would be able to handle the obvious extra load above their traditional video business.

Al Jazeera English has already been using this technology for at least two months now, helping that channel further reach US audiences that so far are still shut out by cable companies from being able to watch it on their televisions.

If you’re interested in checking out some live video on the site, head over to this page on the company’s website. Nothing too interesting so far– let’s hope that the company attracts some more high-profile content providers.

Those Were the Days, My Friend

Laptop’s Avram Piltch has a fun story on ten old technologies we need back today–and, in some cases, how to get them.

Acer Joins the Honeycomb Tablet Wars

No surprise: Acer has announced a tablet running Google’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. The Iconia Tab A500′s specs are what is starting to become standard fare: a 10.1″ display, a dual-core 1-GHz Nvidia processor with integrated GeForce graphics and 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. The Iconia weighs 1.69 pounds and is .52″ thick, specs which indicate that it’s a product of the pre-iPad 2 era. Battery life is quoted as “eight hours of playback for casual games, eight hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of WiFi Internet browsing,” which, I’m guessing, translates into “decent but not quite as good as the iPad 2.”

Unlike some preannounced Honeycomb tablets (coughSamsung), the Iconia will be available soon: it’s a Best Buy exclusive, and Acer says it’ll be available for preorder on April 14th and will go on sale on April 24th. It’s also got the sort of pricetag you’d expect from Acer–one that’s a tad cheaper than the competition, at $449.99.

Oh, and while Acer is saying that it will run Flash, it’s not going to come with it at first. Judging from my experience with Honeycomb Flash in its current form, that isn’t a tragedy.

Unpleasant Horse is Too Nasty for Apple

Apple’s iOS App Store policies have claimed another high-profile victim.

This time, it’s Unpleasant Horse, the first game by Popcap’s experimental 4th and Battery publishing label. Popcap is best-known for the Bejeweled series and Plants vs. Zombies, the latter of which was among the most popular paid iPhone apps of 2010.

Popcap spun off 4th and Battery to experiment with games that aren’t warm and fuzzy enough for the Popcap label. Unpleasant Horse looks cute and cuddly, but it’s actually quite sinister. From the game’s description: “Your idea of a good time is bouncing from cloud to cloud and on to the backs of other, cuter flying ponies, who will thus be sent plummeting to a gruesome, bone-chewing demise, thanks to an unfortunately placed series of meat grinders on the ground below.”

Continue reading this story…

Apple’s First Revolutionary and Magical Device at an Incredible Price

On April 1st, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak (and, briefly, Ron Wayne) incorporated Apple Computer. They then got busy demoing and selling the Apple I, their first computer. I had fun putting together a slideshow to commemorate this significant machine. Its reputation has been an odd one: sometimes it’s been nearly forgotten, and sometimes its importance has been overblown. (No, it wasn’t the first personal computer, no matter what definition you use.) But it was neat–and as I spent time thinking about it, my respect for it only grew.

View Remembering the Apple I slideshow

Remembering the Apple I

Thirty-five years ago this month, a couple of geeky young members of Silicon Valley’s Homebrew Computer Club founded a company to sell a new type of device–which almost nobody had heard of yet–known as a personal computer. The geeks were Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the computer was the Apple I, and the rest is history. Only two hundred or so Apple Is were built; maybe a quarter of them survive. But it was an significant machine in its day, and everything about it–how it was designed, how it was sold, how it was marketed–foreshadowed Apple devices to come, all the way up to the iPad.

Return with us now to April 1976, won’t you?

Save Your Money, Steve: Five Reasons Why We Don’t Need More Microsoft Stores

Agreeing with me is not a prerequisite for Technologizer contributors. (Actually, I always learn more when our other writers–and commenters–have a take that’s in conflict with mine.) I was happy to read Ed’s post on why he shares Steve Ballmer’s apparent belief that Microsoft should build many more Microsoft Stores. But even though Ed makes his case cogently, I’m still not sold on the argument that Microsoft should mount an Apple-like campaign to sell products directly to consumers through hundreds of retail outlets. Here’s why.

Continue reading this story…

Uber, The Luxury Transportation Service, Now in NYC

Want to feel like a rockstar, with your own private car to whisk you from destination to destination across the Big Apple? San Francisco-based Uber is making a push into New York City following a successful launch in its home city last fall. The concept is simple: all reservations are done through the company’s mobile applications or via text message, and professional drivers will pick you up in a luxury sedan in “about 5-10 minutes.”

Obviously, this service costs more than your average taxi. The base fare is $8.00, with a $4.90 charge per mile, and $1.25 per minute idle charge. The minimum fare is $15.00, but no tip is necessary as Uber has included it in the fare. For a private service that seems all but one step below a limo, I guess that’s not too bad.

Continue reading this story…

Facebook Open-Sources Its Server Design

The news at Facebook’s event this morning turned out to be interesting behind-the-scenes stuff: it’s not only talking about the super-efficient servers it built for its data center in Prineville, Oregon, but creating a group called the Open Compute Project to help other companies build their own servers based on the same design. I wrote all this up for Techland.

Ballmer’s Right: Five Reasons Why Microsoft Should Open More Stores

As Harry noted earlier, the Business Insider’s Matt Rosoff has the news of an internal debate with Microsoft on the future of its retail stores. The gist is this: CEO Steve Ballmer and COO Kevin Turner are itching to push full steam ahead and take on Apple by vastly expanding Microsoft’s retail network. However others in the company have convinced them to hold back, citing the expense.

Thus, we’re left with a small network of nine stores (with another on the way), all but three of which are on the west coast. There’s a good chance a majority of consumers don’t even know Microsoft even has a retail strategy.

Continue reading this story…

YouTube May Imitate TV, Channels and All

After failing to become a hub for Hollywood content, Google’s YouTube may be spending millions of dollars on its own professional videos, without help from networks.

The Wall Street Journal’s unnamed sources say YouTube is planning a major redesign focused on “channels.” To that end, the company will reportedly spend up to $100 million to commission low-budget, professional content. Roughly 20 of the channels will host several hours of original programming per week, the Journal reports.

Continue reading this story…

Microsoft Stores Coast to Coast?

Does America need hundreds of Microsoft Stores coast to coast? According to The Busness Insider’s Matt Rosoff, Steve Ballmer thinks so.

Facebook Has News on Thursday

Facebook is holding a press event on Thursday morning at 10am PT. I’ll be there–and as an experiment, instead of liveblogging the news here on Technologizer, I’ll cover it on Twitter, where I’m @harrymccracken. See you there, I hope…

Seagate’s Svelte New External Hard Drive

Thin is in, and Seagate has answered that call by launching the thinnest external hard drive on the market. Dubbed the GoFlex Slim, the drive has 320GB of storage and retails for $99.99. The drive measures in at about 9mm, which is about the average overall height of the MacBook Air.

If your computer supports USB 3.0, you’ll be able to take advantage of the faster transfer speeds with the GoFlex Slim. It is also compatible with both the Mac and PC, and includes backup software with the device. For you Apple purists, there is a Mac-only version available, making it an appealing companion for Time Machine.

From where Seagate is going with this drive, its market is pretty obvious: netbooks and ultraportable notebooks. If you’re going with something that small, you’re not going to want a bulky external drive with it — so Seagate sees a natural market for a drive that puts the emphasis on thinness, even though it’s possible to buy a chunkier drive with higher capacity for the same price.

Atari Finally Sets Up Shop in the iPhone App Store

You may now count Atari among the classic video game systems to find a home in the iOS App Store.

Atari Greatest Hits should be available for the iPhone and iPad sometime this evening for U.S. users. The app includes Pong for free, and includes 99 games from the Atari 2600 and arcade system for purchase. Games are sold in bundles of three or four for $1 each, or $15 for the entire collection. A handful of games include local multiplayer over Bluetooth.

Some of the classics include Yars’ Revenge, Super Breakout, Centipede and Missile Command. I’m saddened but not surprised that Activision’s Atari games, such as Pitfall and River Raid, aren’t on the list. No Pac-Man or E.T., either, but that’s probably for the best.

This isn’t Atari’s first endeavor in the iPhone App Store. The publisher has previously launched modern-looking versions of Centipede, Missile Command and Super Breakout, but the games in Greatest Hits are the actual old-school versions. It’s also Atari’s first store within a store, joining Commodore 64 and VH1 Classic Presents: Intellivision in the iPhone’s roster of classic video game emulators.

I wouldn’t expect to see an Android version. As we learned from the Kongregate debacle, in which Google temporarily removed a Flash game portal from the Android Market, stores within stores are one way to run afoul of Market policy. But that shouldn’t be a problem for Android users, who are free to purchase a third-party Atari emulator and play the console’s entire catalog without paying a dime to Atari. Makes sense to me.