December 11, 2007
With Blu-ray and HD-DVD being relatively new on the video scene, it’s not surprising that each has a logo to let consumers know that a disc is compatible with its respective formats. The HD-DVD one is an extension of the DVD logo (pictured), which informed consumers that the shiny disc they were considering contained more than just music. Each of the major video game console vendors also brands compatible software with the appropriate logo as well.
Thinking about my Vudu column posted today on Engadget and the news that the company is offering The Bourne Ultimatum in high-definition, I’m wondering how consumers other than Vudu owners might know that the movie is available on the service. Awareness of broadband video services is very low. It would benefit several companies at this early stage to develop some kind of logo signifying that a movie was available for legal digital rental or purchase. There have been a few on-air promotions showing that certain video content is available via iTunes, but I’ve mostly seen these for television shows.
It may be hopeless as, unlike with physical media, many of the video download services (iTunes, Xbox Live Marketplace, Vudu, Fanfare) are vertically integrated. However, a broadband video alliance might also have more leeway in negotiating with studios for better terms, such as the ludicrous 24-hour limit to finish watching a movie once it’s started (not that I’ve been burned by that… twice). None of the services (except maybe Vongo) seem to be competing on usage terms.
Tags: alliance, broadband, video downloadsSeptember 28, 2007
Gizmodo has a lengthy post about Apple’s new iPhone update and its impact on unlocked phones. Apple gave advance notice that the update might render such phones useless. The whole iPhone unlocking phenomenon has touched on a lot of complex issues regarding intellectual property, consumer rights, the DMCA and so forth, but are there really that many consumers out there who so lust for an iPhone but have such an aversion to AT&T? Why don’t these people just get an iPod touch and another sleek (smart)phone? It seems like this would save them a lot of trouble.
Since my two-part column on Xohm, I’ve been accused of drinking the WiMax Kool-Aid, but I have to think that some kind of open access (or at least more open access) network would be cheered by consumers looking for most of the iPhone’s data features without being tied to AT&T. Apple’s multiyear exclusive may forbid such fraternizing with Sprint, but at least some fans of Apple’s portable wireless devices are clearly willing to go to extraordinary measures to avoid Apple’s current wireless partner.
September 4, 2007
As Ed Colligan has announced in Palm’s official blog, the company has decided to cancel shipment of the Foleo mobile companion. My friends at Engadget who called for Palm to can the device have exhibited typical class and decorum in resisting the temptation to dance on the initial product’s grave or, perhaps more appropriately given its plans for future reanimation. Indeed, Palm pegs its decision to ice the device not on external criticism, but on taking time to focus on its smartphone platform (shades of Apple delaying Leopard to focus on the iPhone) and putting the Foleo and its phones on the same platform (which makes a lot of sense, given that they are both being based on Linux).
I was certainly a fan of the Foleo hardware, less so on its initial positioning, and hope the device indeed returns. In the interim, it would be great to see Palm work native e-mail capabilities, video and WiMAX into the the “Foleo II.” Until then, bring on the EEE. And hey, Palm, if you need to get rid of one of those preproduction Foleos, let’s talk.
September 1, 2007
After continuing on his fruitless anti-megapixel campaign, David Pogue’s review of the vividly colored Finepix Z (as in Generation) touches on a topic I wrote about two and a half years ago in Switched On — the difficulty in sharing photos on the spot with others, say, at a party.
Fujifilm has enabled these cameras to beam pictures to each other the way early Newtons MessagePads and Palm Pilots could beam virtual business cards (this was quite the geeky spectacle at Macworld Expos after the Newton was launched although there’s really been no replacement for exchanging digital contact information). Pogue lays out the scenario:
August 23, 2007
Not long after my two-part column offering a more moderate pespective on the Foleo, a few of my favorite Engadget editors penned an open letter to Palm that received a chorus of amens from the community and rightly so. I don’t think you’ll find anyone in Palm’s management who doesn’t understand the software opportunity and the sad fate of the original Palm OS through its long period of misguided development and subsequent neglect amidst a dizzying series of management changes. And, yes, the Treo needs to slim down. But a slim Treo is only table stakes as a number of strong competitors (Motorola, Samsung, HTC, Apple) have slim smartphones. My Blackberry 8800 is not noticeably thicker than the T-Mobile Dash either.
So, while the open letter raises a lot of issues that Palm needs to address, following its advice is not going to allow Palm to move ahead and differentiate. It would be like telling Nintendo in the GameCube days that they needed to support HDTV because Sony and Microsoft were going to in their next generation or telling Apple that they needed to switch to Intel processors before they had introduced the iMac and titanium PowerBooks.
July 9, 2007
Engadget just posted the second part of my look at the iPhone’s keyboard from the angle of suitability to task. With all the attention around the iPhone and it’s well-received if sometimes inefficient user interface, I have to wonder how the folks at Microsoft feel. Few if any companies have championed so many pen computing initiatives (Pocket PC, Tablet PC, Windows Mobile, UMPC) through the years and yet Microsoft. But now the company has had its thunder stolen by Apple as it failed to capture literally what Bill Gates articulated as Microsoft’s guiding vision throughout the ’90s, the notion of information at your fingertips In retrospect, it looiks like touch was right. It was the pen that was wrong.
May 29, 2007
Over at CrunchGear, Mike Kobrin opines that memory card usage in MP3 players and music-playing smartphones, which is that they will be the key to sharing your media across your various devices. With this, he reveals Sony’s aspirations for Memory Stick circa 1999. And alas, this dream wasn’t even realized by its more popular and capable rival SD. Mike could counter that things are different now since the cards are getting much bigger; 8GB microSD will be here before long. Still, not many MP3 players support removable memory although SanDisk certainly has its reasons.
As I suggested when I criticized Motorola’s promotion of these cards as bringing the ROKR Z8 up to par with standalone MP3 players,. I disagree. Memory cards haven’t even emerged as the primary way that digital cameras — their most popular host device — exchange photos with other devices, and any removeable media is simply doomed to be out of date within minutes in this age of constant content acquisition.
Mike decries Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for this kind of sharing, but it’s not a problem with the networks. It’s a weakness of there being any kind of reliable cross-platform, cross-device synchronization. Indeed, this is a holy grail of consumer technology and something I plan to bring up the next time I speak with the DLNA.
May 15, 2007
I’ve had my say on Pure Digital and its newest flash-based camcorder. Thomson licensed the basic design of its first Point and Shoot camcorder, adding a switch to choose between higher quality and longer recording times. With the second-generation Small Wonder, though, its upped the ante, adding SD card expansion capabilities and flip-out screen for recording oneself. I took a chance and got one for my mom for Mother’s Day and was delighted at how she took to its its simplicity, at least for recording. For while playback of what’s on the camcorder is a simple matter of connecting the included composite video cables to a standard television, backing up those videos will require delving into software that, however well-designed and easy to use, will intimidate her.
And this is actually another reason why I chose the RCA version for her as Thomson plans to bring out a plug-and-play DVD recorder accessory for the Small Wonder later this year. Dock the Small Wonder into the drive and it should spit out a DVD. DVD recorders designed to be connected to camcorders aren’t new. Both Sony and JVC offer them. But I’m taking a small leap of faith that Thomson will stay true to the Small Wonder’s philosophy of simplicity to close the loop on mom-friendly video capture.
May 4, 2007
In this week’s Switched On, I wrote about Apple’s challenge with model diversification as the company’s line expands. It offers three main famlies of iPods. That’s a lot if you consider its pro desktop line to have one model, its consumer desktop line to have two. and its notebook line as arguably straddling both with the MacBook and MacBook Pro.
This week, though, Creative unveiled its iPod shuffle-like Zen Stone, which its Web site classifies as its 11th MP3 model line in the Zen family! Even trying to reduce that to branded families, you’re left with six — Vision, Neeon, V, Micro, Nano and now Stone. Creative even has its older MuVo line up there although the Nano is very similar in terms of form factor.
The Zen Stone may be Creative’s best-looking player in a while (maybe ever) and at a great price point — with some nice accessories, too (I like the keychain) — that brings style into the portable CD player market price bracket, but this is from the company that criticized the first-generation iPod shuffle back in 2005 as follows:
We’re expecting a good fight but they’re coming out with something that’s five generations older. It’s our first generation MuVo One product feature, without display, just have a (shuffle feature). We had that — that’s a four-year-old product. So I think the whole industry will just laugh at it, because the flash people — it’s worse than the cheapest Chinese player. Even the cheap, cheap Chinese brand today has display and has FM. They don’t have this kind of thing, and they expect to come out with a fight; I think it’s a non-starter to begin with.
Speaking of new kids on the rock, RCA — which places itself as number three in the MP3 market behind Apple and SanDisk — released most of its new Gem line yesterday. I agree with Engadget’s Paul Miller that the Jet is the best-looking of the bunch.
May 1, 2007
My recent column on Windows Mobile spurred a great e-mail exchange with a member of the WinMo team. In response to my raising the anti-trust spectre, he noted that carriers can and in some cases will easily turn off Windows Live Messenger and Live Search. Fair enough, but the abysmal state of most third-party multi-network IM implementations combined with WinMo’s general awkwardness makes alternatives unappealing to the consumer while the price of third-party offerings probably reduce their appeal to carriers.
Sharing that I believe basic, text-based IM to be as much of a utility as SMS, I suggested that Microsoft create an extensible IM architecture similar to that of Trillian and pre-load it with Live Messenger. Assuming the other IM providers or third parties supported that, you’d have the prospect of better OS integration that could be pursued by carriers or consumers. Search choice is even easier. Microsoft could simply provide a way to change the default search provider (probably no more than rewriting a URL) as it does in IE7.
