September 27, 2006
Today Intel announced that it will offer a $1 million bounty for coming up with a sexy box to drive living room acceptance of the PC. The chip developer should save its money. Are cable set-top boxes sexy? Are most DVD players? They’ve found acceptance because they have compelling functionality, something that living room PCs currently lack. Intel would do better to use its prize money for a developer that can come up with a killer application for home theater PCs. If consumers want that functionality, the likes of Sony are up to the task of putting it in a good-looking case. Shuttle is already creating some nice form factors for the living room.
This misplaced focus on hardware reminds me of the sharing functionality Microsoft is pushing with Zune. If you think its system of trial sharing has any merit, hardware is the wrong place to do it It will take a long time before the Zune installed base is large enough so that such sharing is commonplace (think of kids playing Game Boy games against each other). Why not do this with software? Software is so much easier to distribute virally and Napster.com has shown that the labels will agree to a couple of free listens online. Once the songs were zipping among copies of the Zune companion program, then Microsoft could use the hardware to extend that sharing.
September 26, 2006
The DEMO Fall conference lineup looks like one of the strongest I have seen in a long time for consumer technology, especially for hardware. Dash Navigation is bringing innovation to the portable navigation device segment while RingCube’s Mojopac is taking the “virtual PC on a flash drive” (they actually favor hard drives) segment beyond what we’ve seen from U3, Ceedo and Migo. I can’t wait to see the Headplay display. Mvox brings the Bluetooth headset even more independence. Presto is looking to do for photo printing what Ceiva has tried for photo display, although the company really needs a smaller 4″ X 6″ printer offering. Even nComputing has a long-term consumer play.
JaJah, Pinger and GrandCentral are debuting some interesting voice applications (ah, so that’s what you can use a cell phone for?), the latter has the potential to be the first mass-market “universal messaging” service. And Scrapblog and Cozi are targeting the memory and appointment keepers.
September 25, 2006
With much discussion regarding Intel’s continued downsizing potentially affecting the VIIV initiative, it’s becoming increasingly important for the chip manufacturer to articulate what VIIV’s value is. With today’s announcement of Netgear’s VIIV-certified Digital Entertainer, it’s a bit more clear that VIIV is a certification somewhat akin to THX. However, VIIV does not guarantee quality of experience, so perhaps a better analogy is the Wi-Fi Alliance certificaiton, but more concerned with what happens within the PC. If that’s the case, VIIV may compete for consumer mindshare with DLNA.
September 11, 2006
Via Scobleizer comes this Uninnovate indictment of Amazon Unbox. The author’s first two points highlight obvious deficiencies of Amazon’s offerings; his last point spells out the service’s unusually restrictive (in terms of what you can’t opt out of) terms of service. Most of these terms are often developed so that companies reserve the right to do things they may never do, but agreement to them still seems onerous for the convenience of digital downloading.
From TWICE (registration required) comes news that 21 companies and organizations — including CEA (but not CEDIA?) — have joined to form the Home Lighting Control Alliance to promote lighting controls for new construction, renovations and retrofits. Of all the niche markets served by the professional installer channel today, I’ve long thought that lighting controls had the most potential to break out. Particularly with more reliable wireless technologies such as Z-Wave (already supported by Logitech in its highest-end Harmony remotes) and Zigbee gaining momentum, could be a natural growth opportunity for the Geek Squads and Firedogs after they have grabbed the low-hanging fruit of home theater installations.
However, there are a few key missing participants in this effort, such as Zensys and Lutron, which holds a commanding patent portfolio in home lighting. Furthermore, the business models of CEDIA installers leave little incentive for standardization. This space needs a major disruptive catalyst to set it in motion. Insteon products have hit the right price point; the obstacle is democratizing installation.
While the Macworld UK article seemed to indicate that OpenOffice 2.0 would “ship” for the Mac this month, a look at the OpenOffice.org Mac timeline reveals that, while the Aqua version will be “presented” next month, an alpha is now scheduled for next January or February. I wouldn’t expect to see it lauded at the January Macworld event, though. Not only does Apple have its own quasi-suite in iWork, but from all accounts it hasn’t reached out very much to the OpenOffice effort. Indeed, much of the difficulty in getting OpenOffice to the Mac is explained in the FAQ of the NeoOffice project that seeks to circumvent the delays:
OpenOffice.org is paid for by Sun Microsystems so its paid staff are most concerned with completing whatever goals Sun Microsystems sets. In comparison, NeoOffice averages less than a million downloads per year and NeoOffice only runs on a platform that Sun Microsystems has rarely released software for. Because of these differences, any Mac OS X work must be coordinated with the OpenOffice.org paid staff to ensure that the Mac OS X work does not conflict with any work on the Windows, Linux, or Solaris platforms.
Sure doesn’t sound like the kind of egalitarianism that the FOSS world generally embraces.
