I can name that Zune in, mmm, er, ahhh, one — one rabbit!
Confused? I can relate if you looked at comingzune.com which is reportedly the teaser site for Microsoft’s new portable music device that they thinkhope pray will compete with the iPod.
At the end of this odd video — I wonder if it was drawn with a Tablet PC? — comes a sneak peek at the Zune logo:
Engadget has a bunch of Zune details with Ryan Block declaring “… this is one of the biggest gadget news stories of the year for consumer electronics.” Good to see the Microsoft hype machine has Engadget’s support.
Anybody remember the UMPC? The same UMPCs we’ve run a poll for here on the home page the last six months and the number one response (59%) is “Huh? What’s that?” followed by “No plans to buy” (29%). Microsoft had better hope Hmm polls remain completely unscientific. Ahh yes, those glorious UMPCs that were supposed to be priced from $500-$1000, and yet how many have you seen in retail stores at $500 or even $750?
And how about all those portable Windows Media video players? You know, the ones that cost around 500 bones? Those haven’t exactly become must-have portable devices.
Microsoft came from behind with the X-Box and will do it again with Zune. In fact, the Zune team is in the same organization as X-Box. Don’t be surprised if Zune supports mobile gaming and has some ties to X-Box.
I think Mr. Dodge is being too anxious here but at least he’s not resorted to calling it an [gasp] ‘iPod killer.’ Xbox had one thing that Sony didn’t: a killer broadband-only online initiative. I’ll continue to give Microsoft huge props for everything that is Xbox Live because it’s the best gaming experience out there but I’m 99.99999% not convinced Zune will be worth even half the hype it’s generating. Has there been any Windows Media portable device that competes on the scale of the iPod? And what about MSN Music vs. iTunes Music Store? MSN Music has, or at least had ,an exclusive deal with AC DC and that’s the brightest star I can name on their map.
This is coming from somebody who doesn’t currently own/use an iPod and considers himself platform agnostic. I’m sure the iPod faithful are already shredding the idea that Microsoft could develop a worthy iPod competitor simply based on history, but if the Redmond camp does go with something that plays games and works with Xbox Live Arcade, that would interest me. I hope that’s what Zune will be doing. It’s on Engadget’s “maybe” list.
I wonder if the Zune folks have seen the humorous video below and don’t fall into the same traps of past Microsoft products. Despite my clear lack of confidence with Microsoft’s portable device plans, I wish them well.
I’ve been an Opera browser vacation for the last couple months, but after experiencing some Firefox problems, I downloaded Opera 9 beta 2 and am going to try using that regularly again. Not saying I’ll be making Opera my primary browser (FF extensions perhaps too useful to discard), but who knows?
I really like the speed and sessions in Opera. Also you can do some useful things in Opera out of the box that require Firefox extensions to emulate. For example, dragging the current URL to your personal bar and then you can have the favicon only showing by editing the properties. Built-in Opera sessions support you can define different startup configurations is also useful. Oh, and hover over the favicon in the tabs and it will show you a preview of the website — handy.
The Opera non-supported list
Downsides of Opera, however, is that it isn’t supported like FF across some websites/sites/services I’ve been checking out lately:
- Google Calendar
- Google Spreadsheets
- blogcharm (posting is fubarred)
- Tablet PC inking inside the browser
- Adify
Developing Opera widgets
Their widget framework [see Opera widget developer tutorial] looks straightforward: HTML, CSS, Javascript and XML.
What the flock?
In other browser news Flock has received more VC funding and is now officially beta 1, whatever that means these days. I was one of few who wrote positively about Flock in October of last year. Most reviewers of the early developer version felt Firefox with extensions was a better solution, so it will be interesting to see how it is received this time around. Mike from TechCrunch says the new beta 1 is currently his “browser of choice.” Make up your own mind by downloading and trying. I still prefer the concept of blogging functionality being baked into the browser vs. using extensions. Logic would suggest that the lower level implementation should be more memory-friendly. Oh, and yes Flock has extensions too.
When I bought a Slingbox last year, some wondered how this ultimately would be treated by content owners. MLB may soon stand for Major League Bitching instead of Baseball, if they decide to put any serious heat on Sling Media over customers placeshifting MLB games using Slingbox.
Sling enables TV viewers to access their set-top or TiVo boxes from anywhere in the world via any device that connects to the Web. MLB says that’s fine, but if viewers want to watch on multiple devices, they have to pay multiple times.
Yes, you read that right, Major League Baseball actually, seriously thinks this is ripping them off, somehow, some way (they cite deals with cable / satellite companies per city) and would like Slingbox owners who view Major League Baseball games to pay them multiple times for multiple devices. I’m holding up three fingers and the middle one is for you, MLB. Who are you taking your cues from, the RIAA and MPAA?
Now I’m going to rethink whether I want to sign up for mlb.com internet radio subscription. I like baseball but don’t like this at all. Greed, anyone?
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to one of those ultramodern chic clubs. In Vegas or anywhere else which should indicate my level of knowledge about the furniture inside clubs. However, the next time we visit the MGM Grand in Vegas, I’ve made a mental note to check out these interactive tables. Move your hand over them and see some wild and trippy effects. I like.
I know we have some readers from the Vegas area at Hmm based on some past comments, have any of you folks checked these interactive tables out? The videos of them in action look engaging.
The more I read about Blu-Ray, the more compelling HD-DVD sounds. It’s possible the Xbox 360 with HD-DVD player will be less than the PS3 and both Microsoft and Sony are telling people they should “also” buy a Nintendo Wii. Ouch.
To access the advanced features or transfer your movies over a home network, you’ll need to connect your blu-ray player to the internet. If the provider doesn’t like what the player reports about your content, they can permanently destroy your player remotely. Of course, they haven’t activated this feature.. yet.
If Blu-Ray actually does have some sort of self-destruct trigger for hardware as this article suggests, who is going to buy hardware with this function enabled? What is it with Sony and backdoor crap anyway?
Hopefully this isn’t just FUD, but I’m seriously starting to think against buying electronics that start with S and end with Y.
Can you tell what game this mother, pictured below, sitting next to us at my son’s track meet is playing? My wife smiled, knowing instantly what picture I was taking.
Not a word find, or crossword puzzle but Sudoku. Casual gaming has gone mainstream when you see sports moms playing it — on paper — during a track meet. Not playing it via Brain Age on the DS, although I’ve heard that title mentioned a couple times recently in unexpected places offline.
This week at E3 the talk seems to have been how underwhelming the Sony PS3 at $499/$599. The strange spinning of the PS3 prices by Sony execs (”it’s too cheap?”) and how Microsoft and Nintendo could be the one-two punch in the next round of game systems. I think what the Xbox 360 has going with its Live Marketplace is a huge advantage, especially if they make their Live service free when the PS3 comes out. That was the one part of Sony’s similar marketplace/Live connection where they have an edge against Microsoft in adoption. You have to make the Live part of the games free. People spend $60 on a game it’s too much to ask them to spend another $50 a year to be able to enjoy the online part of the games.
Nintendo isn’t going to play the ‘we have better hardware than you check out the cool HD stuff on our Wii’ games, they are going to do what they’ve always done better than both Microsoft and Sony: create fun games. That tennis game that was demoed looks seriously fun as well as a decent workout. Sort of reminded me of what the Xavix promised to deliver, but never really got any of that critical third party support. No game system can go it alone.
Speaking of games, I noticed in the brochure for the Toshiba HD player that they mentioned HD games. Has anybody signed up to make games to run on these HD players? That could be a whole other platform, bust or not, to consider going forward.
Speculation abounds that Nintendo will release the Wii for around $200, roughly half the price of the real Xbox 360 package (the premium bundle, forget about the core) and one third the price of the real Sony PS3 package ($599 USD).
I think Sony is going to have to rethink the pricing and get their machine priced much lower when it is released, or very soon thereafter. As I pointed out in a previous entry, the price won’t matter at launch to the hardcore early adopter gamers. Remember, people were paying over $1,000 on eBay for Xbox 360 when it launched.
However, if history is any guide, the second, third and beyond generations of non fanatical gamers won’t pay more than $500 for a game system. 3DO and Neo Geo proved that 10 years ago. The economics haven’t really changed. Get the system under $250 at least for mass market appeal.
Even the 360 — which is fast becoming my favorite gaming console thanks to Xbox Live Arcade — is too expensive but they could land a serious body blow to Sony by reducing the price in November. The core system should be $199 anyway, if it’s even sold at all. $299 for the premium with a game packed in would be a great price, or $249 without a game, thus getting them to the $250 price point.
This has been an exciting week for video games and I’m still not done pouring through the massive amount of E3 coverage. In year’s past I would have had to wait for the next issue of a gaming magazine to get the coverage, but online has changed all that, including videos, interviews and much more. I’m looking more excitedly to the Wii then I was before E3. As for PS3? Given a choice think I’d rather spend the money on a UMPC. If we ever see one around $599, that is.
I’ve always been fond of Google’s annual Zeitgeist project where they show search term stats for the year and wished we could run some of our own queries on the data. Well today my wish has come true thanks to Google Trends. I just ran the obligatory GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) search comparison for 2006.
Interesting to see that the term Yahoo is getting the most search love, but who would be searching for “google” on Google, I guess. The news part has Microsoft trending ahead so far. Then check out the numbers by locale:
While this provides some fun stats comparisons, I’m also interested in Google Coop which allows users to add up to 1000 annotations to topics. My Google Coop profile. I’ve still got a lot to learn with this one [Google Coop developer docs].
Tomorrow I’m going to take a look at the new version of Google Desktop which includes the ability to take the gadgets to the desktop. Curious if my Keno game will port over with no additional modification.
Next week it sounds like Clipmarks et al will be getting some competition with the release of Google Notebook which Phillip Lennsen describes as: “… a little notes window that follows you from the Google search results to other sites, allowing you to collect bits and pieces of information. You can also make public parts of Google Notebook to share it with others.”
Wow, what a busy day for Google. I notice their stock didn’t do much today. Wonder what tomorrow’s reaction will hold? What do readers think of all these new Google goodies today?
And let’s not forget E3 is still rocking along. What a busy week all around. See you on the other side of night.
I’ve been reading 1GB RAM would be required but the minimum requirements say 512MB. I am running more than 512MB RAM on my Tablet PC (1GB) and main workstation. Most of our others have 512MB or less. Not a Vista story, but my eMac is starting to grow long in the tooth with 256MB RAM and no superdrive. Although I do have an external firewire DVD burner for the Mac. I can see an Intel based Mac in the future, perhaps 2007 and something that would dual boot to Vista will be a purchasing concern there.
Still need to fix my Tablet PC I/O board (a “couple hundred dollars” according to Motion support) and then that will be Vista ready, I think. The graphics card is pretty good, although the resolution is 1024×768 so does that mean it won’t work with glass?
All in all, it looks like I may only need to purchase a little more memory to be Vista compliant on some of our machines and a couple graphics cards. A little while back I polled readers for how much RAM you were using and got a somewhat decent response.
As I write this I wonder if we aren’t still a good year away from the Vista reality, but what will you need to do to get Vista ready? And how many machines do you plan to upgrade?
Last Friday we saw HD-DVDs in the store for the first time. The movies Apollo 13, Doom and Serenity in HD-DVD format. I haven’t been paying a huge amount of attention to this space although I was aware that the intended next generation DVDs would be in two different formats: HD-DVD and Blue Ray Blu-ray by Sony. Some are comparing these formats to the VHS vs. Betamax competition.
What I found interesting about the packaging of the HD-DVDs was nothing mentioning the need for special hardware. The 1080i resolution is clearly toted on the package as well as a label across the top that says “HD-DVD” and lastly the price. The two three HD-DVD that we saw cost $29.99 USD which are roughly a third more expensive than traditional DVDs.
I wonder if people will buy these thinking they can play them on their existing DVD players and HDTV to get the 1080i output? Yeah, I realize that might be dumb, but the package size isn’t that much different than a standard DVD. At least Sony has the UMD the packaging different-sized (the size of a PSP game UMD) and clearly marked that it requires a PSP to play.
Sony doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record with proprietary formats so I think we’ll be going with HD-DVD. But first we need to get a player. Right now it looks like Toshiba is the only game in town (?) . DVDtown has a detailed review of the HD-A1 HD-DVD Player ($499) which explains that an HDTV with HDMI input will be required for full 1080i display. Although they do note that “Late DVI inputs should work with adapters, but early DVI inputs are iffy.”
Also of interest in their review is a reference to the Toshiba press release describing the difference between a standard DVD and an HD-DVD as far as interactivity:
Toshiba’s press release to give you an idea of what their HD-DVD players are capable of, besides outputting 1080×1920 lines of resolution: “Today’s DVD requires users to stop movie playback to access disc menu content. With an HD-DVD with advanced content, you’ll freely navigate the menu features, without stopping the movie. Browse through the chapter guide, change setup options and select supplemental content all while the movie plays on. With HD-DVD’s disc menu capabilities, the fun can continue as you interact with disc content. HD-DVD’s ability to superimpose motion video over the main program adds new options for supplemental content and other extra features. With HD-DVD, director’s and actor’s commentary can be motion video superimposed on the movie–allowing them to literally point to the material they are discussing. Or, the feature can be used to present an actor’s biography or other supplemental informtion, all while the movie continues to play. And you’ll be able to turn these features on and off without stopping playback.
What you need to experience 1080i HD-DVD
I wish at least the early HD-DVD packaging had the following bullet points clearly listed:
an HDTV with HDMI input or newer model DVI with HDMI convertible
an HD-DVD player like the Toshiba HD-A1 ($499)
Other HD-DVD players will be coming out which includes a rumor that an Xbox 360 compatible HD-DVD drive will someday be available. Perhaps to be officially announced at E3.
HD-DVD competitor Blue Ray Blu-ray is supposed to be out in June with players costing between $1,000 and $1,800. Think I’ll take a pass on that. So now a new gadget is on our radar: an HD-DVD player. Our TV doesn’t have an HDMI input, however, so we would need a new HDTV or LCD TV more likely (we were looking at those the other night) first. Ouch, my wallet is starting to hurt.
DVDtown also has a list of the movies currently available in HD-DVD format. A mere 8 titles as of May 2 are listed which isn’t that compelling yet, although Serenity in HD-DVD does sound pretty sweet. I’m sure just like with UMD, it will take a few months to get ramped up.
And speaking of UMD which I originally wasn’t interested in, then six months later took the plunge for Starship Troopers (my only UMD purchase to date) and referenced reports indicating positive UMD sales, and recently the outlook being reported by is “bleak.” Going to keep my eyes peeled for UMD fire sales. They would sell better if they were all released for sub $10, but people aren’t going to pay more than the price of a DVD and in some cases the same price as an HD-DVD. Come on, Sony.
Will HD-DVD gain widespread adoption
It’s still way too early to make any predictions here, especially considering most people still don’t even have HDTVs. Not to mention HDTVs with HDMI inputs and the new HD-DVD players, of which Toshiba has (the only?) two models currently available.
Widespread DVD-like adoption is going to take having HD-DVD players under the critical $300 USD price point. It’s a catch 22: more volume equals less price and less price equals more volume, but it’s dififcult to get volume without the price. Even better if manufacturers/retailers can eventually get the HD DVD players down to sub $100 like current DVD players.
HDTVs are coming down in price though. I’ve seen them in the $300-400 range which is still more than some people want to pay for a TV. A fairly decent HDTV can be bought in the $500-750 range. With the word that LCD will be coming down price-wise this summer, we might see some sub $250 USD HDTVs start appearing.
So when will you, friendly readers, be making the HD-DVD plunge? Or will you be holding off for awhile until the prices on the HDTVs and HD-DVD players come down and/or you see how many movies ultimately are released on the HD-DVD format?
Update 8:59am PST: Changed “blue ray” to blu-ray, doh! I admitted at the beginning I haven’t followed this stuff too closely. Will be watching it closer now though.
Yesterday I bookmarked Yahoo Tech for when I had some time to watch their tour and compare to CNET for product reviews.
Typicall Yahoo ad crap
Yahoo should add their exclamation point after the word ads next to their name. First view shown above was a gigantic ad that was replaced about 5 seconds or so later. They’ve done studies that indicate people don’t stay at a new site that long or return if the first thing they see is ads. Fortunately the big ad goes away if you do stay but this makes me wonder how long Yahoo is going to continue down this path. How many bad first impressions can they have?
Touring play controls hell
The tour video is a lesson in frustration. The show controls for the tour kept retracting when I wanted it to expand when hovering over. Tip: put the mouse over the control you want to use and don’t move. It will stay in the up position and then you can pause, stop, rewind and play. If you hover just under any of the controls you can play a game of chicken with the controls. Unintentionally, I’m sure.
The search is over
Currently the hot gadget on my radar is the UMPC aka Origami. When I heard these devices would be in the $600-$1000 range I was excited but a couple months have gone by with teasing everywhere and very little concrete news on in retail store delivery dates. Seems like the very first UMPC to hit any store — online or offline — will be the Samsung Q. It will weigh in outside the promised price range at just under $1,100 not including tax. I’m not likely to pay that much for a device that isn’t Vista compatible, so that is the big question on my mind for these devices: are they Vista compatible? If not, then might as well wait a year to buy and get one that is, just like the next generation Tablet PCs. [see Don’t buy a new tablet pc, buy an older model instead or keep waiting]
Even though I’m not in active shopping mode, the most likely next gadget above $500 USD will be a UMPC. I’d be willing to spend $1,000 if the device was Vista certified. That’s better than the $2,500 I paid for my M1400.
So I conducted several searches at Yahoo Tech for these Ultra Mobile Personal Computers (UMPC) and each of my four searches returned no results: umpc, origami, tabletkiosk eo, samsung q. No results was the kicker for me. Stop.
Compared to CNET
Will have to return to Yahoo Tech when they get some more content. Perhaps unfair since I only searched for one gadget, but based on that for me it’s definitely no CNET killer. I conducted a search for UMPC at CNET and had three results, including a good review of the Samsung Q posted yesterday.
Any readers give Yahoo tech a try yet and have better results for gadgets and products currently on your radar?
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to one of those ultramodern chic clubs. In Vegas or anywhere else which should indicate my level of knowledge about the furniture inside clubs. However, the next time we visit the MGM Grand in Vegas, I’ve made a mental note to check out these 
