Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Microsoft beats Apple to the TV with Xbox Live Video, SD and HD shows

Beginning on November 22, Xbox 360 owners will be able to buy and rent over 1,000 hours of TV and movie programming using the new Xbox Live Video Marketplace.

read more | digg story

Time Magazine's Best Inventions of 2006

Time Magazine has released a list of what it considers to be the best inventions of 2006. YouTube is the number one invention, but they also list many winners in other categories, like cars, food, and health. For all the geeks out here, there's a Tech Toys category. (The talking head has to be my favorite.)

read more | digg story

Sunday, November 5, 2006

Robert Scobles' thoughts about Zune vs. iPod

I respect the thoughts of Robert Scoble, and have to say I agree with him on many points regarding this hot topic. Below is his post that has made news lately.

My thoughts about Zune vs. iPod « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger: " October 26, 2006

So, you’ve seen the Zune video. Here’s my thoughts about whether Microsoft is going to be successful.

I’ll come at it from a number of different angles:

THE FUNDAMENTALS

Box design: good. As good as iPod.
Look and feel and overall hardware quality: good. As good as iPod. I actually even liked the brown one a lot.
Screen: better than iPod.
Hard drive size: worse than iPod.
Features: mixed bag, we’ll get into that below.
Price: in the right neighborhood.
Marketing: unknown, but Apple has set such a high bar that I doubt Microsoft can even get close.
Software experience: unknown.
Updateability: better than iPod (if I were Apple I’d worry about this).
Conversationality: (Does it cause a conversation). Here Apple wins with the white headphones hands down.
Integration: beats the iPod cause it works with Xbox.

EDGE CASE

As an edge case, IE, someone who tries all the latest stuff and gets excited about a lot of it, the Zune abjectly fails"

(Via Scobleizer.com)

To Further the discussion, David Caulton a Zune contributor had this to say about the Scobleizer's comments comparing the Zune and iPod.

Thursday, November 2, 2006

Macworld: News: Touch-screen iPod leak by Apple?

Macworld: News: Touch-screen iPod leak by Apple?: "Touch-screen iPod leak by Apple?
By Kevin Railsback, Infoworld

In an iPod developer feature guide on the Apple website, they apparently have leaked a confirmation of the upcoming touch-screen iPod. On page 10 of the PDF the following text appears:

Note: Linking to photos and videos is supported only for 5th generation iPods running iPod Software version 1.2 or later. All other Notes feature capabilities described in this document are supported for iPod models with display screens, beginning with the touch-screen models.

In the PDF that section shows a bar off to the left, like it is still text undergoing editing and most likely was not meant to be released to the public."

(Via Mackworld.)

Mac OS X Hints: Make sure your mailboxes really are empty

Mac OS X Hints: Make sure your mailboxes really are empty: "Here's how to get to the Account Info window in Mail to view what's actually sitting on your mail server."

(Via Macworld.)