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Life Without Comcast: An Experiment in Internet TV

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 16, 2009 at 2:07 pm

Life Without ComcastMaybe the title of this new Technologizer series is unfair. I don’t despise Comcast, the company who I’ve been paying for cable TV service for the past six months. (Until then, at my old pad, I was a DirecTV man.) But I don’t love it, either–especially the part about paying it a large amount of money each month when I watch maybe .000001% of what it offers.

And oh, did I mention the remote control that came with my Comcast high-def box? Worst piece of technology I use regularly–every time I pick it up, my blood begins to boil a little.

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Technologizer’s Most of 2008

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 31, 2008 at 1:53 am

Technologizer's Most of 2008As I write this, there are slightly fewer than 22.5 hours left to go before 2008 is history. I promise I’ll stop looking back at the year momentarily–I already summed up its twelve biggest stories–but I’m in the mood to document a few more noteworthy items that made the year what it was. I’m calling this Technologizer’s Most of 2008, and it begins after the jump…

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Dear Twitter: Please Don’t Become Palm

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 30, 2008 at 10:55 am

palm-twitterDear Twitter,

Got a second?

Almost everybody who folllows my online adventures closely knows I’m a fan of yours. I Tweet up a storm at my own www.twitter.com/harrymccracken feed and there’s also a technologizer one that automatically Tweets every Technologizer story.  When friends tell me they don’t understand you, I evangelize on your behalf. I can’t think of a tech product or service I use every day that I take more pleasure in.

But I’m increasingly concerned about you. Simply put, you seem to be profoundly complacent on multiple fronts. A few examples (all of which plenty of people have pointed out before me)…

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The Twelve Weird Old Electronics Commercials of Christmas

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 25, 2008 at 4:47 am

halsmithI’m not ashamed to admit that I’m kind of addicted to watching old TV commercials on YouTube. Especially ones involving computers and electronics. And today, I have an excuse to share a bunch of them with you, in no particular order.

1. Mattel Electronics, early 1980s. Hal “Otis the Town Drunk” Smith plays a Santa who shills for an offer involving $2-$12 in cash back if you bought “qualifying” Mattel Electronics games and Pepsi. Never trust a Santa who wears a hat shaped like a football and tries to convince you that rebates are worth it.

After the jump, lots more of this stuff–don’t say I didn’t warn you…

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TV Today: It’s Still About Lean Forward vs. Sit Back

Posted by Jose Alvear on December 18, 2008 at 8:23 am

Imagine yourself watching TV right now. Where would you be? Would you be sitting back in your favorite chair in your living room and holding your remote control in one hand? Or are you sitting down at your local Starbucks, sipping coffee and watching video on your iPod?

Odds are most of your TV watching still occurs in comfort of your living room with your TV set. But increasingly, consumers are watching video anywhere they can: from work on the PC, on the road from a laptop, on iPods and iPhones, and other portable media players.

Even the term watching TV can be misconstrued, since there are so many options today. Does it mean watching a live broadcast TV channel as it is being aired? Does it mean viewing a show on-demand from your DVR? Does it mean buying the latest Daily Show episode from iTunes and watching it on your iPhone during your morning commute? Or maybe you’d rather go to NBC.com and watch the full episodes of Heroes for free (with limited commercials, of course).

I’ve recently been thinking about an old phrase from the early days of Internet video: Lean forward vs. sit back. Essentially, it’s the difference between PCs and TVs. PCs are more interactive while TVs are a passive experience. Lots of companies I spoke to back then were interested in the future of television and interactive TV services and wanted to blur the lines between PCs and TVs.

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Nintendo Gets Into Media Convergence With…Books?

Posted by Jared Newman on December 17, 2008 at 11:21 am

mariobooksWhen it comes creating machines that do more than play games, Nintendo never shared the eagerness of its competitors. Thinking back, I can’t recall any of their consoles or handheld devices offering other entertainment media besides games.

That’s why the deal between Nintendo and book publisher HarperCollins, to release the 100 Classic Book Collection for the Nintendo DS handheld, is such a surprise.

Really, though, it’s pretty clever. You pop in the cartridge, flip the DS on its side so the dual screens are aligned horizontally, like a book, and use your finger and the touchscreen to thumb through the virtual pages of Dickens,  Shakespeare, and much more. And does your Amazon Kindle play video games when you grow tired of reading? Thought not.

It makes sense from a practical standpoint, which helps explain why Nintendo is bucking its “gameplay above all” philosophy to do it. The DS could probably handle some sort of video capabilities to compete with the Sony PSP’s UMD format. Likewise, Nintendo could devise a streaming video service for the Wii and has suggested the possibility of DVD functionality. But you’d need servers to stream video, a major marketing push to sell new handheld video formats, a firmware update or new console generation to support DVD. None of that sits well with the company’s classic approach to gaming systems.

In any case, Nintendo doesn’t need to offer any of those non-gaming perks; they are outselling Sony’s handheld and the other two consoles, after all. So instead of branching into potential pitfalls like music and video, the Big N is providing a much simpler alternative — the written word.

Maybe it’s not such a surprise after all.

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Twelve Questions About the Apple-Macworld Expo Breakup

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 16, 2008 at 3:33 pm

philschillerWow. Wow. Wow. Over the last few days, folks noticed that the traditional announcement that Steve Jobs would kick off IDG’s Macworld Expo with a keynote speech hadn’t come yet, and began wondering if he might be a no-show–as unlikely as that seemed. Sometimes, the unlikely is nonetheless reality: Apple has announced that marketing head Phil Schiller will keynote, and that it’s pulling out of Macworld Expo altogether as of 2010.

To quote its release:

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

All of which is true. And it’s conceivable that it’s the whole story about Apple’s decision. But the release doesn’t tippy-toe anywhere near any of the truly interesting questions raised by this bombshell. Such as the twelve that leap to my mind–which I’ll ask after the jump.

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In the Year 2020…

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 15, 2008 at 11:51 am

richterUs longtime Conan O’Brien fans know that one of the signature skits of his late night show was “In the Year 2000,” which made predictions — however ridiculous — of what life would be like in the future. Well, Pew Internet and American Life project did something similar, but they took a serious look at life in the year 2020.

In order to come up with their predictions, Pew surveyed Internet leaders, activists, and analysts to see what they thought the net would be like a little over a decade from now. One of the most notable findings is that a general consensus believe that the mobile phone will become the primary access point to the Internet.

Voice recognition and touch screen interfaces will also become more prevalent in use of the Internet, and efforts to improve the Internet would continue. Rather than a full “reboot” of the Internet, where it is rebuilt from scratch, future enhancements would build on the current architecture.

More connectivity mean the lines between work and play as well as the real and virtual world would further disappear. This is bad news for Internet critics who say the ‘Net is destroying inter-personal communication, because it appears as if that will only get worse.

Sick of the ongoing piracy battles? Better get some earplugs. Pew says respondents expect the copyright fight to continue as pirators continue to attempt to circumvent the restrictions placed on digital content.

What are my predictions for the Internet in the year 2020? I don’t know, but I’m much more progressive than what Pew has listed here. I fully expect the Internet to be much more immersive. Everything we own will be connected, from our clothing that will know when we are sick and will call for help on its own, to our cars that will use the Internet to avoid traffic, to our lives themselves which could nearly be lived 100 percent digitally if we so desire. Matrix anyone?

All the things I have listed above aren’t far fetched. In fact, every single one of them are in development to some extent. While we won’t be plugging in like Neo, It will be pretty god darn close. It’s unbelievable how fast technology is moving these days.

I’m interested what you think will happen. What do you see in the Year 2020?

(Pew’s full study can be found here.)

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The Case of the Disappearing iTunes Ringtones

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 15, 2008 at 9:45 am

ituneslogoSome iPhone users are finding that iTunes is no longer displaying whether it can make a purchased song a ringtone for the device within the application itself. This forces the user to search for the track within the iTunes Music Store to see if it is eligible, or just taking a chance and seeing if the track will work through attempting to use the “Create Ringtone” menu bar option.

I myself am a victim of this problem. I stumbled upon it after attempting to make a Christmas ringtone for my phone. I have about 400 purchased songs, and not a single one shows the little bell that signifies you can purchase a ringtone of that song.

At first, I thought it may have been some license dispute, so I checked to see if ringtones were still available on the iTMS. They are. Then I tried to make a ringtone. After finally finding a track that was eligible, I was able to purchase, transfer, and use it without a hitch.

A search of the Apple support forums finds a thread where this problem has been discussed, And here’s another. And yet another (there are more, but I’m not posting them all here). Users are reporting the same problems I’m seeing. It looks from the responses that Apple is not even sure why users have suddenly lost this functionality within iTunes.

I haven’t been able to find another person in my network of friends with iPhones that is seeing this problem, so whatever it is, its pretty localized. Yes, its not a showstopper, but its pretty darn annoying.

We’ve got a request out to Apple for comment on the problem.

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Sony to Unveil a Touchscreen Walkman?

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm

sonylogo[UPDATE: In the first version of this post I assumed this was a phone–as a commenter points out, that’s not part of the rumor. Post amended to reflect that…]

Sony Insider is reporting that Sony will use CES as the launchpad for the first touchscreen Walkman. It says that “trusted inside sources” have told it that the device will have a widescreen OLED display, 16GB or 32GB of memory, Wi-Fi, a Web browser, and YouTube integration, among other features. Oh, and an FM radio.

There’s nothing in this description that sounds particularly fanciful, but neither is there anything about the Sony Insider report that rings especially true. Especially since the “product shot” included with the story looks like someone whipped it up in Photoshop in a few minutes:
sonyinsidershot
I can do Photoshop as well as the next gossipmonger, and therefore have fashioned Technologizer’s own official mockup of what Sony’s device may look like–not a photograph, but an incredible simulation:

Sony Phone

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